Greener Grass

I worked an overtime shift this past Saturday and overheard a coworker telling someone on the phone about a hiring event that a competing security company was holding in town on Monday morning, two days later.

The next night, my boss announced mandatory weekend overtime going forward. I wasn’t on the first schedule that she put out, probably because I’d worked two consecutive Saturdays voluntarily. I thanked her for that. She assured me that I’d be on the next one.

I reminded her that, while I have no problem with an occasional Saturday, any Sunday shifts assigned to me would result in her having to fire me because I wouldn’t be showing up. She said that any shifts she assigned to me would most likely be Saturdays. “Most likely” made me nervous. I attended the hiring event.

I was expecting a job fair type of thing, multiple hiring managers, etc. In and out in an hour, two tops. Nope. It was a walk-in interview opportunity, and they took people in order. And very slowly, as it was only one person doing the interviews, and several times there were pauses.

The event was scheduled for 0900-1300. I got there at 1030. There were about fifteen people waiting when I walked in. I was scheduled to be at work at 1600. After 1500 had come and gone and I still had five people ahead of me,  I called work and told them that I was going to be late. 

Just after 1530, I got my turn. Ten minutes later, I had a verbal, conditional job offer. It turned out that the hiring event was for the site across town that they had just taken from my current employer.  It’s about ten miles farther away from my residence, but still a reasonable twenty-two minute commute.

The offer was for the same shift, albeit 1400-2200 instead of 1600-0000. Full-time. No mandatory overtime, except in the unlikely event that relief calls out short notice and a flex officer cannot be found in time. Pay is ~40٪ higher as a regular guard than I’m currently making as a shift lead. They also promised flexibility for time off for church events. I’m a bit skeptical about that last one, but anything is possible.

I couldn’t see not taking it. I will quit before I work Sundays, and I’d rather not scramble for something else if/when it happens. I prayed about it as the process continued.

On Tuesday, the admin called to schedule me to come in for the drug test and I-9 document verification. The same day, I got the background check questionnaire and a link for about a dozen company policy, with acknowledgment of receipt for all. I agreed to come in the next morning and spent the next hour or so going through the online stuff.

The next morning, I drove up to the office in Raleigh. By then, my background check had cleared and she’d entered me in the system as hired. I passed the drug test (saliva – near instantaneous results), signed the offer letter, did the I-9, the direct deposit paperwork, and the state-mandated transfer paperwork to move my Guard License from my current employer to my new one. I also provided uniform sizes so they could start the ball rolling on that.

The site requires all guards to maintain current CPR certification, and since mine has lapsed, they scheduled me for a class next Thursday.  I will start at the new site the following Monday.

I emailed my two-week notice to my current supervisor that afternoon. She didn’t see it until the following day. When I got to work that afternoon, she called me into her office. I explained my reasons for attending the hiring event and expressed my surprise at how it turned out. She said she was heartbroken to lose me, but she understood and wished me the best.

She promised that if I got there and found out that the grass wasn’t really greener, she’d welcome me back if she had an open position. Given the short-staffed condition that we’ve been in for the entire ten months I’ve been there, it’s safe to say that she’ll have a slot. The client liason expressed nearly the identical sentiment when I told her that I was leaving.

It’s nice to have a good reputation. Now, I get to build a new one with a new group of folks. In the process, I’ll find out exactly what shade of green the grass really is.

Possum Adventures

Usually, we’ll get one or two possums per year. In the last six months, I have caught and dispatched four. Or so I thought.

Typically, after I trap one, I’ll put a couple of 22LR bullets into its head/neck/forward torso area, depending on its position in the trap. After it quits kicking, I’ll then dump it out into the edge of the woods. It turns out that they are very resilient creatures. 

After last night’s experience, I think we had our usual one possum this year. It just escaped death three times. Maybe eating my cat food gives them nine lives.

After I caught it and went through the usual procedure, I checked the camera to see how long it had been in the trap before I noticed and triggered the door to close. It was 0430, I was exhausted and reading a book to stay awake and never saw it approach. On the camera playback, I noticed that it had an awkward gait as it crossed the deck, favoring its right front appendage. You know, as if it had been shot in the shoulder and managed to heal instead of die.

I went back outside where I’d left it for dead with the usual two bullet holes in the front part of its body. I’d brought the shotgun out with me, planning to put a round of buckshot in it as an insurance shot. I found it very alive and trying to crawl away. So it got two rounds of 00 buck to convince it that continuing to draw breath wasn’t an option. The very dead body was still there this afternoon when I came to work.

Going forward, I’ll do the shoot and dump with the 22 as in the past, then switch to the 12-gauge and guarantee that it’s really dead instead of playing possum.

Just the Tip

What tip?

The plug on the left came out of the #3 cylinder of my daily driver, twenty-five thousand miles after installation. The one on the right was from cylinder #4. I think there’s a slight chance that #3 was the reason why it has been missing (I think the kids today call it skipping) for the past week or two. The car burns oil, and I’d venture a guess that cylinder #3 is the biggest offender.

Four

For the fourth time this season, I’m down with the crud. I remember when a second cold/whatever in a given year was rare. Four? Unthinkable! Yet it has happened. 

Helpful Idiots

Most ATC folks are good people, but sometimes they don’t think like pilots. Well, not like me anyway. This morning, I flew home from Warrenton. I filed HWY – FAK – OXFRD – TTA. The system always wants to assign me HWY – MOL – SBV – TTA. I don’t like that routing, for the same reason I’m getting ready to bad-mouth the Washington Center controller.

I prefer the shortest distance possible, hate en route re-routes, and prefer to avoid climbing above 5,000 if I don’t have to. Direct HWY – TTA runs me right through the Farmville MOA. The ceiling for the MOA is 5,000, but I like to fly at 4,000 when westbound. That means a re-route or a climb if I’m cleared through it, and it is/goes hot before I’ll be out of the airspace. The FAK – OXFRD routing is only only four miles longer than Direct, and takes me down the narrow alley between the Farmville and Barfoot MOAs, eliminating the need to climb to 6,000 – the next highest IFR westbound altitude. 

When I called up from HWY to get my clearance, I requested that they give me my filed routing instead of the system-generated route via MOL and SBV – which is twenty-five miles longer than Direct and requires 6,000 to clear terrain, if able. Potomac cleared me as requested, and off I went.

Not long after Potomac handed me to Washington Center, the controller hit me with, “045, cleared destination.” He was obviously trying to help me by clearing me Direct, which normally I would appreciate. Not today. Direct from my location at the time he cleared me Direct put the MOA directly in my flight path in less than thirty miles. Something told me to either ask if the MOA was hot or request to stay on my current route. I didn’t do either, and I paid for it.

It might’ve been fifteen minutes later when I got, “045, Farmville MOA is active, climb/maintain 6,000.” I crammed throttle to the firewall, slid the mixture forward about an inch and a half, and pitched up ten degrees for Vy.

Yes, the plane is running much better with a properly tuned carburetor. Yes, I can climb to 10,000 if I need to. Eventually. From 4,000 to 6,000 today, I averaged 400 feet per minute. The higher the altitude, the lower the rate of climb, even leaning for best power. By 8,000 feet, I might manage just over 300 feet per minute.

One is required to advise ATC when operating under IFR and is assigned an altitude change if unable to climb/descend at least 500 feet per minute. I hate making that admission, especially on Center frequency with all the heavies listening in. So, despite altitude being a pilot’s best friend, I tend to fly in the weeds and tall grass. Next time, I’ll ask to stay on my planned route and hope they will let me.

Urf Day

Today, for Earth Day, I made sure to drive my diesel-powered truck. I also burned some aviation fuel, which contains lead. Later, in a direct response to the Meatless Monday for Earth Day display at my workplace, I ordered a big chunk of a dead animal. For delivery. To work.

Legal

I found myself in a bit of an awkward situation a few weeks ago. I’ve maintained a Florida Concealed Handgun Permit since before the turn of the century, first as a resident, then transitioning to non-resident status when I moved to Virginia around 2000. Virginia requires its residents to get their permit, so I obtained a Virginia permit as well.  Some years later, I found myself in North Carolina, and went through the process to get their permit.

North Carolina is stupid in one particular aspect. If a permit holder moves to a new county, they must go in person to the sheriff of their old county and request transfer to the new county. The law doesn’t spell out the in-person requirement, but all one hundred sheriffs require it, or did at the time I moved counties. Around that same time, I learned that they honor any permit from any state, resident or not, and this applies to North Carolina residents as well. Since the sheriff was being stupid, and since I held a valid permit from Florida, legally recognized by North Carolina, I told the sheriff to go pound sand. Not literally. I simply let the permit stay on file at its original location and expire.

I maintained the Florida permit, renewing it every seven years, as required. They always sent me the renewal package about ninety days prior to expiration, so I hadn’t given it any thought recently. Somehow, I had in my mind that it expired in 2025. More on that shortly.

Several months ago, my pastor invited me to join the church’s security team. We don’t advertise such, but some of us are armed. Virginia honors Florida non-resident permits, so in all my travels to the Commonwealth, I didn’t give it much thought. After joining the security team, though, I got to thinking that it would probably look better if I had a Virginia permit, regardless of reciprocity.

Shortly after starting the application process, I had an occasion to look at my current Florida permit. It expired in 2022. I’d been carrying illegally in both North Carolina and Virginia for coming up on two years. Oops.

Thirteen days from dropping the application at the post office, I had a fresh permit from the Commonwealth of Virginia in my hands, courtesy of a very efficient state police department.  I’m legal again.

Amazing

I flew the bird home today after the repair at HWY last weekend. It’s never run smoother, been more responsive, or made more power since I’ve owned it. Hopefully, it stops with the breaking of things for a while now. Like a couple of years. I need a tire and probably should replace the engine mounts. I’ll probably schedule those to be done at the annual. I don’t need any repairs to go with the replacement of those wear items.

I had to clear out a bird’s nest and a half from the engine compartment before launching today. The cowl plugs were in place, but there was a full nest built between the #1 and #3 cylinders and a partial nest at the bottom just above and in front of the nose gear. I cleared what I could, but I’ll need to run the compressor with a blow gun to get it all out from around the cylinders. Stupid birds.

I’m working 1100-2300 on Saturday and will be flying up immediately following my shift. And rain is in the forecast. Night IMC after a long day. Not looking forward to it.

0.4 AMU

The HWY mechanic finally got back with me yesterday. Four pictures of Benjamin Franklin will cover the repairs. I’ll find out on Monday if there is still a problem or if his repairs and adjustments cured my issue.

Phooey

On Friday evening, I talked to the mechanic at HWY. He was only just then pulling my airplane in to work on.  He told me of a few extra things he wanted to check in addition to repairing the coupling. We agreed that I should plan to leave it for an extra week to ensure that he had time to heal anything that he found.

Based on that, I drove the econobox to Manassas on Saturday morning. I didn’t bring my flight bag or anything else aviation related.  Late this (Saturday) afternoon, just a few hours after I got to Manassas, Dude called me. 

I’m done with your plane. Got the coupling taken care of. Ran a camera up the exhaust, and everything looked good, no loose baffles. The timing on one of the mags was off three degrees, so I adjusted that. I pulled, cleaned, and regapped the plugs (just done less than five hours ago at the last oil change, so that was unnecessary, but he covered all the bases). Adjusted the carburetor, mixture was way rich. Ran it up, everything good, maximum static RPM was 2290.

I want it back home. The weather on Monday morning is forecast to be ideal for flying, with just the usual ten to fifteen knot winds common this time of year.  But no flight bag. So, no ipad. And I don’t own a set of paper charts. No Sentry for in-flight weather, traffic, and GPS location on the ipad that is also three hundred miles away.  No backup radio. Nothing but what is in the panel.

What is in the panel is more than sufficient for VFR day flight. Program the GPS for HWY-FAK-OXFRD-TTA and immediately upon crossing OXFRD, activate the RNAV 21 approach from OZOPE. That routing avoids the Farmville and Barfoot MOAs and RDU’s Class Charlie. Follow the CDI cross-referenced with the magenta line on the GPS map screen, and there’s no getting lost and no need to speak to a soul except on CTAF.

Legally, though, I need charts. And it’s a post-maintenance flight. The wise move would be to have all my gear. So, phooey.