RL: The Storm is Coming ‘~”

The Tornado-Like Storm

I usually try not to mention any rl that’s got nothing to do with ffxi, but this one’s a little different. It was IMO, a life experience that I guess, could have took my life. :o

Just this last Sat, while most people are at home playing ffxi :/ sad face like me had to goto work. On my way to work, I took this picture. As you can probably see…. Shit is coming in. I work as a flight school dispatcher/manager so I pretty much run the flight school as well as ensuring planes comes back in a piece. Well that day was a challenge. It’s a weekend so people desperately wanna fly airplanes (take their friends up for a CN tower tour… go grab some famous Fish and Chips from another airport then come back etc), but I got to make the right decision in terms of who can go and who can’t. But that isn’t the excitement here. What’s caught me was the weird looking weather map. The pressure gradient (aka isobars) still pretty spaced out. This suggests there’s going to be some moderate frontal activity. Well mmk. 45 knots on forecast (roughly 70km/hr) meh, had those wind before so I went to do a check, at least one wheels chocked, brakes in and flaps up on all planes parked outside to ensure controls aren’t damaged by gusty winds. Called all the plane back from their fun flights as its now beyond their limitations. Np cool there.

Here’s the Weather Map prior amendment for those that’s interested in looking at one. (Cloud, Icing & Turbulence)

As the unpredictable weather moves in. A fukin piece of towering cumulus cloud like the one in independence day movie cloud moves in. Our neighboring airport recorded 115km/hr (65knots) of wind blowing. The weather map suddenly being amended to show all pressure gradient all smashed together heading this way. Well shit, means there are going to be a huge amount of updraft and possible microburst of shit from those clouds. With less than 5min, I went out to with my other dispatcher that I was training that day to start securing planes.

As we move out, our asshole neighboring flight school untied one of our ropes for their plane. Well shit, I went around grab another rope from an empty plane tie-down and secure our planes. Just as I was tying the ropes to the ground and onto the plane, the storm hits. Debris and dirt was all blown towards my face and I can still find small pieces of debris/dust in my pocket as of today. The wind so strong that breathing becomes difficult. I tied one wing, hop inside the plane and perform engine shutdown checks as well as put the parking brakes on. As I exit the plane, which was only a matter of a few seconds, he wind finally became 65knots and the plane lifted off the ground for a good 3-4sec. I was literally not on the ground anymore. Those 4sec felt forever for me. It was that one rope that I tied that kept the plane not flying. It was scary to see that the plane flew on its own without u controlling it.

At this moment, a plane from our neighboring flight school wasn’t tied at all. The little Cessna 152 move/flew on its own and was moving towards us… And no this one I didn’t see.

I then went on to help my buddy and the plane again start flying again on its own. I ran and held the plane strut one hand while trying to dial to the fixed base operations to ask ramp attendants who were just chilling inside to help. The very same moment, 2 planes who doesn’t even have rope. One Diamond Katana and a Cessna Caravan (kc6) on floats start spinning 360 degree on the ground. The little Cessna from the neighboring school moved on its own again but this time it smashed their tail against our leading edge of our wing. Running with 3hr of sleep from the previous night, this whole thing starts blurring with video game. I wasn’t able to tell if all those were real or not.

A few seconds later, the ppl that I told to land earlier finish secure their planes plane ran in to help. With 2 extra, we were able to move the plane back to their spot instead of just holding it prevent it from flying.

While this is happening, the airport emergency siren went off. All the runway light started flashing (saying to evacuate the runway) and you hear airport fire trucks (2 of them) came out with their ropes. They parked their fire trucks, 2 ropes one end on each truck and the other end securing the spinning plane. U see firefighters dashing under the wheels and chocking wheels prevent it to move. I was wondering… If those wind suddenly picks up even more, they would possibly gotten role over.

All this seems so fiction to me. My other buddy was like did u know I was thinking about my life when you just held the plane? To me I dunno…. Maybe I play a little too much vid game, but danger was never my concern at that point. Maybe I’m to the stage where the line between real life experience and vid game experience starts to blurred together. Video game graphics is so real now that it seems like I can obtain real life experience in a video game.

It was one weird experience.

The Aftermath.

Here’s just 2 of the newspaper covering the winds. It was the strongest since 1973.

• Ontario, Quebec clean up after severe storms
• Scattered power outages across Greater Toronto Area

Not just that, I got a phone call from a Flight School in Ottawa that their whole airplane fleet was destroyed, and he was asking if we had any planes for sale/long term lease/straight out buyout/anything. It sounded really bad and urgent.

Other Crazy Experience.

I had once where I was performing a touch-and-go and, I had a Weather Cock :O well, its just a term that means there was a gust of wind hitting the tail of the aircraft, swinging the aircraft’s heading. I had that happened to me and I pretty much just shove in full power, roll out and flew again, rolling off the side of the runway x_x. I swear I heard the siren went off at the Air Traffic Controller, but I guess since the Tower people are also people I know, they never told me that it was really me (or maybe it really wasn’t me), but I’m pretty sure there are sensors at the side to track planes rolling off the edge of the runway. Well… gotta have some scary experience :o

So I’m still exping in flying… well that’s what I’ve been focusing on instead of exping FFXI. Anyway that’s it RL and I’m just glad I’m still IRL.

Worth a Look

RESTAURANT CITY on Facebook is MAD FUN! :) Its stupid game but fun. Basically you level up your dishes (yes, more exping), run your own restaurant and trade strategically with your friends for ingredients. If you play RC, drop a message below and lets trade :D

Here’s a SS of Restaurant City :)

• Taser Intl sueing a game company for using the E-Taser lol.
• More Taser. Naked Wizard got taser in public XD with a lot of eyes. Not work safe.
• StarCraft II mod for StarCraft =) (There’s one for Diablo too)