Good morning,

I see it's been almost a month since I last put up a blog. I know that some of you are on Facebook and see me there, some of you are on my email list and get those letters, and some of you are probably seeing all of this stuff as I put it out. This blog was my kids idea but I do have to admit that I have enjoyed blogging more than I thought I would. I just don't do it as often as I would like to.

The other day I was totalling up a logbook page and it really pointed out how little flying I have been doing lately. Since the first of June, when the move to Mumbai really got serious, I have only flown about 30 hours. Usually I fly that much in a month. Some of you have asked and I am on salary so it's not a monetary issue, it's just that I like to fly and to be busy, so this has been a particularly frustrating stretch for me. This last week we did have two flights, which was nice. One of them was actually a charter flight and it was down to Kochin, which is a place that I hadn't been to before down in the Kerala coastal region of Southern India. I was glad to get a chance to fly down that way, even though it was only a pickup trip and allowed no time on the ground at all. A couple of days later we had a trip for height verification on our RVSM (reduced vertical separation minimums). An engineer flew in from Bangkok and he had the equipment required to do our height verification testing. ATC around Mumbai was not in a particularly good mood and they sent us offshore for our test flight. That became tricky because the engineer wanted us to fly in a straight line for 45 minutes but since we were headed out to sea, even though we had slowed way down, we couldn't fly that long or we were going to get out of radio range, which would complicate things mightily. So, we flew as long as we could and then turned around before we lost communications. We headed back towards Mumbai but there was some serious weather on the way and we began negotiating for moving around the weather. The controller started us down, which we couldn't do during the test, so we had to turn around again and fly out towards the ocean again. Then, I went back in the cabin and checked with the engineer to see if we could trun around and fly back into Mumbai for the landing. He gave me the thumbs up so, we headed back in, but on the way in Mumbai had a couple of 360 degree turns to make room for other planes as we headed back in. With the Hindi/English thing going on, it's always an adventure. It's in times like these that I am thankful for my Indian copilot, who can speak their language, so to speak. Lots of explanation was required for the controller to allow us to fly at an RVSM altitude when we were seeking RVSM certification. It seems that we already were RVSM approved and the only thing we were going was getting our height certification from the engineer. Sometimes, it's just how you word things that makes the difference.

If you have looked at the pictures above, I am sitting in the pilots lounge of the General Aviation Terminal in Mumbai. This was something we didn't have in Delhi, so I have to appreciate the building and the accomodation of our private planes here. The parking here is quite interesting, with the runway just a few yards away, the big jets go roaring right past you. If they ever had directional control issues due to an engine out or something, it would get really interesting really fast. It is fun to watch the big planes, the 747's, the 777's and big Airbusses do their takeoff and landing thing just right in front of your eyes. The Mumbai runway is probably one of the most used pieces of runway real estate in the world. They do have a second runway but it runs in a different direction and so they are reticent to use it under normal circumstances, which keeps runway 27 very, very busy. Sometimes, they tell us we are number 20 for landing and it isn't too hard to be number 10 for takeoff. I try to save fuel by taxiing on one engine and also idling for long periods of time on one. At least here in Mumbai the taxi times are short, compared to Delhi. I have never, ever taxiied as much as I did in Delhi. Sometimes, it was a 20 minute taxi to a far away runway. Here, last week, we started, called for taxi, and tower told us to pull into position for takeoff, so it was less than 5 minutes from startup to takeoff, but this seldom happens. More likely is that you will do a short taxi and then wait 20-25 minutes for your turn to takeoff. Since airplanes are feeding in from several different takeoff positions, you often don't know your sequence and if you start your second engine, that will just about guarantee that you will have to wait another 10-15 minutes than you thought.

Our houseguest, Ankita, went home to Delhi for the weekend to take care of some business. She will be back on Tuesday evening so we have had some time to ourselves. Karen has not been feeling well, so has been sleeping most of the weekend.

We had something really interesting happen on Sunday morning. Our househelper from Delhi had called a few weeks ago to chat about something. She has been talking about coming to Mumbai to work for us here since she liked us so much. I couldn't totally understand what her conversation was about but she was trying to get it so her 20 year old son could come down and work for us. I had tried to tell her that we didn't have a position for him because Karen really doesn't want a male housekeeper around when I am gone so much. But, come Sunday morning, he shows up with his suitcase, at the front door and was expecting to go to work. Now, he spoke just a little English but not much. His mother speaks none. I had, at the most, indicated he could stay with us for a few days while he was looking for work but now that was going to be negated by the company of our little air hostess. I was eating breakfast, getting ready to go to church and the doorbell rang. In he comes. So, I called my friend up in Delhi for whom this kids mother now works and explained everything to him. He said Saina would be coming in to work on Monday morning and he would explain everything to her then. Of we went to church, with this very nice young man just tagging along. I am not sure how much he got out of the English only church service but he was just so nice. After church I called my copilot and asked him to please explain to this young man, Attosh, was his name, that we really didn't have a place for him to stay and that I was so sorry for the misunderstanding. I was willing to pay for his transportation back to Delhi, which is 1,000 road miles away. He said he would only need 500 rupees, which is about $12. I handed him that and he packed his bag and headed out. We were so relieved because we really don't have a servant's quarters in this apartment, like we did in the one in Gurgaon. Here, we only have three bedrooms, one of which is the office with the computer and all, so no bed in there. With Ankita here, there is no extra bedroom at all. Karen and I were sweating this out but after Vipul called and talked to our new helper, he was very nice and totally understanding that his mother had kind of misguided him and so off he went. I did get him to one church service in the few short hours that he was with us. Karen wasn't feeling well enough to go on Sunday morning so it was good to have someone to talk to the auto rickshaw driver.

Wow, I just got a phone call and the airplane has some interesting flights coming up. Also, amazingly, the management actually listened and did not take the new captain they were looking at. He just didn't have a good reputation here in the local flying community, so that is always alarming. I had talked to his former boss and they said they had restricted him from VIP flights. I had told them in an email last week that I thought all of our flights were VIP flights. I still thought that I was going to have to try and work with this guy and do some intensive training. But, we dodged a bullet and so I am breathing a sigh of relief and thanking my lucky stars.

Our taxi will be here any minute to take us to the mall. There, we are going to eat some lunch and try to take in an English movie - yahoo!!

I'll be back with more next time.

Dan