puffy = bad

Yes they are beautiful. Moreso, they are turbulent.

Two weeks ago a child, approximately 6, asked me why we didn't fly through these clouds on our flight. This was after saying he loved flying but was "scared when it was bumpy." I had to explain to him that the clouds are what makes it bumpy and that it would have been bumpier if we had flown through them. Sadly, he left dissatisfied with my answer.

In reality, the puffier the cloud, the more bumpy it will be to fly through. The puffiness is a result of the rising air currents moving at different speeds as the warmer air ascends through colder. This rising of air creates the worst of the turbulence.

Other Aircraft

Some people ask, "Do you ever see other airplanes up there?" The answer obviously is yes. However, this picture was taken at 1000 ft above and a little over three miles away. As you can see, there's not much to see.

Taken at 170000 ft en route Knoxville to Charlotte. He was going from Atlanta to Johnson City/Tri Cities, Tennessee at 18000 ft.

A few statistics for the understanding of the likelihood of seeing other aircraft when not in the terminal area on approach. There are approximately 650,000 total pilots in America. There are over 1.2 million drivers in the Metropolitan Nashville Area. Given that there is an additional measure of separation by using the third dimension-altitude and that there are no real "roadways," seeing other airplanes, while not uncommon, is not usually too exciting. Usually, they are so far away that they appear to be mere specks.

All of that said, few openings to books are as dramatic or as interesting to read as the opening to Fate is the Hunter by Ernet Gann.

Storm at Night

FL 310 enroute Mobile, AL, to Charlotte, NC. I think this was taken near Atlanta. Storm was disipating as we passed.

brief apology

It has been a long week with no internet access. I'll put up pictures and posts over the next three days.

Winglet

Captain Kirkland took this one en route Nashville to Charlotte. 29000 ft over Tennessee.

AG

Clinton, TN-home of my flight attendant this month.

Routings

So yesterday our day consisted of White Plains, NY, to DC National to Nashville to Philadelphia to Knoxville. Needless to say it was a long day. Midway through the day we got a little tease of home as we passed over the top of our home airport en route from DCA to Nashville.

So the logical question is why did you fly so far out of your way to get to Nashville? The short answer is that Air Traffic Control has built "roadways in the sky" called arrival routes to ease congestion. If planes were coming from all directions all at once, it would cause mass chaos. So ATC creates arrivals. To merge onto these arrivals, aircraft are routed over certain points. The closest arrival point for Nashville from DC is over Knoxville. Hence why we got a sneak peak of home.

So next time your captain lists where you are going and you wonder "why are we going two hundred miles out of our way?" the answer is probably Air Traffic Control.

Back to Gulfport

Not much to say on this one. On climb out from CLT en route back to GPT. Passing through 15,000 ft, just over top of Athens, Georgia.

Double post and the story of stupid phone

Double post!

CLT tower after the storms passed last night.

The story of stupid phone. Stupid phone is the nickname I have for my phone. It was less PC for a while, but I decided to be nice. My phone is just that a phone, no internet, the text messages work occasionally, and barely any pictures. This is deliberately so. I do it so that I do not have to worry about data charges, etc. Anyway I got tired of explaining all of this to everyone who had a "smart phone" and so I adopted the less PC name for the phone for a while. Now I just call it stupid phone.

Anyway for all of its stupidity, it is the progenitor of this blog. The last few months, I've been sending pictures to friends and family who want to see some of the things I get to see and do. As mentioned before, they asked for better resolution and easier access, so I started posting them here.

Anyway, this is Charlotte tower last night about 2000 EDT just before leaving for Gulfport.

Storm over Knoxville

Over Atlanta last night, we noticed the large storm off to the right in the picture. Minutes later the sunburst from behind it was just spectacular.

This photo was taken in between Athens and Atlanta, Georgia, at 28,000 feet climbing to 30,000 feet en route to Gulfport, Mississippi.

Again en route to CLT on 7/11. Just west of Atlanta.

Electrifying

We were flying along yesterday afternoon passing through two major cells of a massive line of thunderstorms associated with a Cold Front that was passing through Ohio. Our route went from Akron to Charlotte. Approximately over top of Parkersburg, West Virginia, we were struck by lightning. At first, we didn't think anything had happened. Our radios were behaving, the electronics appeared normal, and we didn't have any negative indications. So we continued. Upon landing, we noticed that one static wick had been blown off.

These clouds were the leading southern edge of the storm. These are just north of Charleston, WV at FL 270. The storm featured hurricane force winds in Chicago and gusts well over 50kts in Akron when it pushed through. Horizontal rain, lightning, visibility of 3/4 nm were all also part of the frontal passage.

RJ Driver Intro

Welcome to RJ Driver.

I fly for a living, and love what I do. Over the past few months, I've been sending photos to friends on stupid phone (that's another story). Anyway, everyone that was getting stupid's pictures were complaining that the resolution was no good and that the pictures were grainy. They asked for better quality pictures, so I've broken out the camera and will now be posting them here.

This picture was taken midway between Montgomery and Atlanta on the return leg to CLT. We'd just crossed a major line of storms and were at FL 270 at 320 kts trying to get the passengers back to CLT in time for their connections after a late start. CA Kirk took this picture for me out his side as the sunset was on his side.