I didn't want to fill the page with your entire quote, but thank you! Very good and encouraging info, I think the idea about telling an employer that you're aware of the details of the job is a great idea. I'll write something up for myself.[/QUOTE]
It's no problem. If you have any questions or anything feel free to PM me.
You can prepare yourself for the life of a Picto pilot by also being aware that some years are worse than others for flight time and the flight times for the season can vary across the fleet by as much as 150+ hours between the highest and lowest time pilots. You really have to just mind your business and if you're constantly comparing yourself to your co-workers you're going to be disappointed at least some of the time. There might be one bad month where you do only 30 hours (while maybe your co-workers on another project are doing more than twice that) and it really sucks waiting for clear days or snow to melt, but the flying favors the end of the season. This year my March, April and May were all over 100 hours, but I spent a big chunk of November waiting for snow to melt and my December was my worst month ever.
We had an Aztec pilot with really bad luck who had he flown the average that season could have probably went straight to the regionals come Summer time, but due to a lot of downtime for mx and some bad projects he came up short so he had to fly a few extra months this Summer to get the time he was looking for. That said we also had an Aztec pilot do two 100 hours in a month and still top 160 hours.
We've had people on this forum ask if you can bring your pets and the answer was a resounding no. There was a guy who flew for Northern States who brought his cat with him while he worked, but he did so likely at the risk of losing his job if anyone at Picto or his boss found out. That said a lot of the guys would bring Playstations, Xboxs or had emulators on their computer that they could play in order to save on per diem and to kill time while hanging out in hotel rooms. It's great throwing football or frisbee and sometimes you get to some places where you can go for some pretty good hikes. Some of the guys would bring their remote control helicopters. You might also be able to fit a few golf clubs in a 172 and perhaps even a bag of golf clubs depending on how many bags you were bringing with you, but I'm not aware of anyone who did.
. But that's a story for another time.
