I'M A PILOT!!!!

I started flying this week!!!
The days just flew by! I can't believe I only have one week left before I leave Fort William!

Flying rovs is SO MUCH FUN!!!... being paid to do it sounds almost like a joke. The first half hour was very stressful, but strangely easy. Once you can control your buoyancy and deal with the current, the rest is just pure play. Maybe it's because I'm a diver and I'm used to dealing with all of this... but I'm the best in my class :P
Like Tom said (with some resentment cause he's having a hard time) "I make it look easy".

First day we did some exercise with the tanks that are sank near the pier... land on the turret, hover in front of the canon, read the sonar to find out you've drifted 200m west and are now under the diving barge :P

On my second turn as pilot I spotted a dive knife on the seabed. Rob said to go for it, so I did. Landed behind it, opened the manipulator, moved forward, digging in the sand, stirring up shit like mad, closed the manip, brought it back to the rov cage and it's now wrapped on my desk!
I will varnish and frame it as my first found treasure! :D

Today I was flying Falcon 1215, who doesn't have a sonar. Makes it harder for orientation but still doable, now that I know the site better. It doesn't have a manipulator either, only a curvy piece of metal sticking from it that you can use as a hook.
We practice retrieving loops of cables from the seabed and placing them on a hook (attached to a rope hanging from the pier).
Find a loop, try to pass it through 1215's hook, lift off, don't let it slide off, fly slowly, find the hanging hook, reach it, look down at your hook (chances are the loop has fell off, so go find it again), go above hanging hook, go forward and down so the loop slides on it, try again, try again, swear loudly, try again, drop the loop, swear and start over...

Here I can brag... In 30 minutes, my classmates managed 1 loop each... I got 3 :P hehehe I could have gotten more, but Paul (our teacher today) started humming the "Mission Impossible" theme and I lost focus... and the loop I was carrying... and I ran out of time.

For our second turns we went to the close bell to observe divers... who all start dancing as soon as they see us... got some recorded footage of that. As soon as I burn a cd, I'll put it here so you can see the macarena underwater. :P

For my last turn I went down to 30m... vis is shit, so we switch to the b&w camera. Got footage of the ugliest lobster ever! It looks like a giant tarantula! yarch!!!

Tomorrow I'm in class again, got an exam in the morning and then we're gonna splice our own loops of cables, to be thrown out of the pier... so we can practice search patterns on Monday to retrieve them (and verify that our joint was waterproof).

update on Saturday night..
not only did the guys throw a tv out, they nearly uprooted a tree, punched a two feet wide hole in the bedroom wall and broke the toilet in that room. The guy who's room it was wont get his certs until he pays the bill for the repairs (he's also one of the 4 who ended up in jail that week) and the others might have to wait a while before getting theirs. Commercial diving is a small world... words will be pass on to companies as well regarding their behavior.

and I haven't heard anymore from the weirdo :)