surreal weather....

finally at home for late Christmas celebrations this is today's surreal weather around our town:

northern lights....

after waiting for three nights now in Alaska without seeing anything i finally got lucky while departing from Anchorage eastbound and we saw a spectacular show of green northern lights!

merry christmas everyone!

layover in Alaska....

Hi everybody!

today i have a few pictures for you to show what you can do during a three day layover in Anchorage.
this time the two of us got a nice car and startet driving north towards Fairbanks, where we used to stay until a few years ago at the lovely Sophie Station and for a rememberance of the old times booked a room for a night, actually the longest night of the year on December 21st and the night does not get much longer than in Fairbanks, which ist with 64˚N only 120 nautical miles south of the Polar Circle, where the night doesn't end at all.
the reward for all the driving on ice and snow and the emergency breaking for crossing Moose was a great time on the road and really nice views and pictures of the seemingly limitless population free nature.
1400km in two days, 450 pictures and great time to remember!

here you go:

the tour:


some moose on the road...


the big dipper in the clear night-sky pointing to the north star:


the small Gulkana Airport under the moonlight:


the beauty of the alaskan nature:






the alaskan way of life - keep the engines running, its too cold to shut them down...

busy december...

while in the company a strike was barely avoided and pilots are still searching to regain trust into a management that stabed us in the back and basically deserves no trust at all, december passes by quickly and i was kept busy at home during vacation and off-days, to prepare christmas.
i will most probably not be at home with my family, but somewhere between hongkong, anchorage and chicago, exact location still open due to last minute changes on all routes during christmas.

that doesn't really help in planning a christmas party abroad since any friends i inform, would make plans and probably be frustrated by my last minute excuse.

to cope with any changes i packed a suitcase for 11 days and all temperatures from +30 to -30˚C,
planned trip is round the world with lux-baku-hongkong-anchorage-chicago-lux.
let's see what happens and if i can bring you some nice pictures to entertain your holidays.

brgds, cu
nuck


bonus:
sunrise over the atlantic ocean, flying mangos from Petrolina to Accra two weeks ago:

once every now and than...

we get the chance to be at special places at the right time and weather, and since you where waiting for a new entry for longer now i present some older pictures of one of those experiences:
it's the Ayers Rock in Australia shot on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Melbourne on a special day when we were planned to fly a little bit more south than usual due to winds and had a nice sunlight.
it was a great experiance to finally see it appear on the horizon and fly a turn passing it slightly south and we all gathered on the left windows to take a close look, knowing it's probably a once in a lifetime experience!

have a great week, keep reading,
brgds - nuck

a job with no season...

while most people living in europe or north america enjoy living with the four seasons of the year, the longhaul flying crowd has no such luxuray and is living with hugh temperature and climate changes all year, completely odd for the body and most of us need half a year for the body to adopt. during that initial time most have a constant flew, loosing their voice and occacional fewer. after that initial time the body basicly adopts and we can start to enjoy living this crazy life.

while this week it's getting winter in Europe and people at home start mounting winter tyres and crank up the heating in the houses, i was sent to Brazil - Campinas, Curtiba and Petrolina - i was fighting summer temperatures of up to 38˚C, heavy rainshowers with standing water on the runway and aquaplaning. relaxing at the outdoor-pool and eating in open street-kitchens.
next week i will be back in the winter in Europe and Asia, Novosibirsk as the other extreme on the networ has now -30˚C!

and this is how the current week (November 18 to 25th) looks like:
brgds - nuck

Campinas airport, built like an aircraft carrier,

which messes up the radio-altimeter for landing and has high risk for hard landing...

a little 25 min rainshower in Campinas:

a walk through Petrolina, one of our funniest destinations, 

because it's the only uncontrolled airport we are flying to,

that means ATC controll ends descending through flightlevel 160.

unique on the 747 operation. lovely little town but rather poor...

fun fact: tire change on a 747:

hello!
i do not consider my blog political therefore no comments about the terror in france.

my topic today is changing tires on big aircraft. unknown to most bigger aircraft carry a spare tire, just like a car, hidden somewhere in the belly, usually in the back. while also carrying some other spares like special tools, oil for replenishment and a few smaller parts, all together called the flyaway -kit by Boeing, we do not carry the jacklift to actually change a tire or other heavy tools.
we rely on getting this tools at the aiport.
next problem is the weight - while it's not a major problem to change the nosewheels, it can be changing a body- or wing-gear tyre in the back, where the majority of the weight is resting. a typical hydraulic/pneumatic jack can lift 65 metric tonnes, while the aircraft (747-8) can weigh something inbetween the empty weight of about 196 t and the full take-off-weight of 444 t. so you think of 44 t resting on the nosewheels and 100 t on each main gear truck, exceeding the capabilities of the jack.
unlaoding the cargo becomes necessary, creating some delay...

sidenote: we also have a limit on the differential tire-pressure on one axle, if it is exceeded due to a completly flat tire we need to check/change the whole axle because it may be bent! tire pressure and brake temperature on the 747-8 are monitored constantly, so even if we have a slow deflation on a tire in flight we can see that in the cockpit and advise ground staff at the destination to prepare a pit stop for a new tire.

a speciality of the 747-8 is the possibility to mount 747-400 tires on the nosewheel if both of them are replaced. there are steel-adaptors in the fly-away kit to mount them. -400 tyres are a little bit more rounded on the profile, while the -8 tyres you can see on the pictures have a little edge on each side of the profile and can carry a little bit heavier load.
-8 tyres also are inflatet to a slightly higher pressure increasing the needed PCN or Pavement-Classification-Number on the airports.
the PCN is measured by drilling samples on airport movement surfaces, it should always be higher than the ACN, you guessed it - the Aircraft-Classification-Number.
if the PCN is not high enough it basically means the aircraft will sink into the asphalt, the possibility of a truck or car to drive on a surface doesn't mean anything to us, the 747 can still sink into weaker asphalt or concrete, therefore we watch our movements very carefully.

thanks for reading, was a little bit technical today, here are some pictures of a double nose-wheel change at hongkong airport,  it took 3 hours to complete....
brgds - nuck