Gloomy Week/Deal With Stress

It's 60 degrees Fahrenheit at the moment, and it hasn't been much warmer than that for a week now. There has been a lot of days and nights where the clouds cover the sky. Too bad, because I really wanted to see the meteor showers, but missed it due to the visibility. But with the coolness of cloud cover has come some rain too, which is needed to lower the chance of forest fires. A serious threat around here during a dry hot summer like it's been up until recently. Oh well, enough about the weather.

I haven't done much flying in about a week. My Dad has been gone a good amount of that time, or I just haven't felt up to it when there was an opportunity available. It may seem a bit silly that I wouldn't just take every opportunity I get to be up in that airplane and flying around. I mean that's was I came out here for right? It's true, but one thing I learned early on, then had to learn again, is a concept called workload management and situational awareness, and I'm being serious. It can be very dangerous for a pilot to fly when not prepared mentally and physically. Just a couple of weeks ago I was working on landings with my Dad. We'd go out early in the morning, around 6am or so. The first day was fine, but not great, because I was a bit nervous and it was my first real effort at doing landings. The next day I was rested and did even better than the previous morning. That night I got a little less sleep, and woke up yawning and rubbing my eyes. My Dad asked me if I was ready to do this and I told him I was, but the reality of the situation was that I needed to wake up some. A shower, a cup of coffee, more sleep, I needed something else, because I was not going to be as attentive as a pilot needs to be. We flew out to the Coeur d'Alene airport just fine, but when I was trying to land it was like I forgot everything we had just done the previous two mornings. I was even screwing up my radio calls. I made about 5 terrible landings before my Dad's efforts at getting me to focus became a source of frustration for me. That only made things worse, and I just threw my hands up and said "I'm too distracted, let's call it a day", and we went home.

I'd say I'm a pretty cool headed person to begin with, but we all experience stress, and become distracted by it to the point where it bleeds over into the work place or whatever. When learning to fly airplanes, it's very important for the pilot to learn to set that stress aside, or choose another time to fly.


Jared M. Thiele