Information Echo

Information Echo Has Moved - PLEASE UPDATE!

2006-05-14T22:38:00.000-04:00

NOTICE: Please update your blogrolls/links/bookmarks - Information Echo has now officially moved to www.oshawapilot.ca

No further posts will be made here at blogger.com.
Please visit the new site to comment, and catch more up to date news!

Thanks for all my faithfull readers. I look forward to seeing you at my new home.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO OSHAWAPILOT.CA NOW!

$100 French Fries

2006-04-05T11:13:00.000-04:00

NOTICE: Please update your blogrolls/links/bookmarks - Information Echo has now officially moved to www.oshawapilot.ca

I am only echoing the occasional post here now - the majority of my blogging now takes place at my new site.

Please visit the new site to comment, and catch more up to date posts!

Contrary to my lack of posting recently, I have been flying. I’ve spent so many frustrating hours dealing with my aforementioned webhosting disaster that blogging has fallen by the wayside unfortunately.

I’m Finally starting to get the cross-country numbers a little healthier in the logbook. Not overly long cross countries by any stretch, but far enough and full-stop so they can be logged as xcountry time.

Although I had originally planned to do this flight on Sunday morning, and go to CNF4 (Lindsay) for breakfast, a schedule conflict with my passenger caused a reschedule for 4PM.

It actually worked out great - we ended up having the last reservation of the day for our aircraft, so it ended being a nice leisurely flight, with an hour to spent at the airport restaurant before turning around and heading home.

All of the pireps upon our arrival at the airport suggested that it was really bumpy, and we should expect constant moderate chop. Thankfully my passenger didn’t take issue with this, so we decided to head out regardless.

The cloud base earlier in the day had been at 3000 feet, and although it was now very close to CAVOK, the bumpyness had apparently persisted through the change in the weather.

My passenger is not new to little aircraft, but he says it’s been about 20 years…and the last “little” plane he says he was in, he jumped out of. (Parachuting). So it wasn’t a commercial jet, but it wasn’t a 152, either. This is definately the first 2-seater aircraft he’s been in, no question. He’s surprised at the size I think - the 152 is definately close quarters.

Our departure is non eventfull, but it seems rather smooth once we climb above 1000. My passenger lets out a healthy “Woo Hoo!” as we hit about 200′ AGL. It’s nice to know that the passenger is enjoying themselves, and the flight has barely begun.

At our cruise altitude of 3500, it’s actually quite smooth - nearly hands off flying on the way to Lindsay airport, our destination for todays flight. Apparently the turbulence is history. I’m not really upset about that.

There’s a nasty headwind on the way north - I’m showing about 95Kts indicated, but the GPS is showing a groundspeed hovering around 70kts. It’s smooth, but strong, and creating a noticable yaw into the wind, which even my passenger picks up on.

But, the slow speed makes for some great sightseeing, which we do plenty of on the way there. We amuse ourselves listening to a C130 Hercules fumbling through a radio call to London FSS..and fumbling some more…and more. Aren’t these air force guys supposed to know their stuff?

As I call up Lindsay unicom and get an answer. Short and sweet - a wind check, and runway 31 is the preferred, at pilots discretion.

Traffic is light - just one other plane doing a touch and go. He announces that he’s joining to the right base, which is kind of curious since 31 is a left hand pattern. Regardless, he’s turning final just as we join the left downwind, and we are shortly on final. My landing is satisfactory, but once again I fail to impress myself. My pax seems impressed, regardless.

Once we are down I call CFA to confirm that nobody has reserved behind us. The answer is exactly what I wanted to hear - nobody has reserved, so the aircraft is ours for the rest of the daylight hours.

We stop at the FBO for a few minutes to chat with the nice lady who provides the Unicom service at CNF4. She jokes that it’s been a slow day, and she has been looking out the window “rating” everyones landings. I ask her where her scorecards are, and how we rated. She says she missed our landing….that’s probably a good thing - Mid 4’s at best, I would guess. :-)

Off to the restaurant we go for an order of $100 French Fries. No $100 hamburgers today, dinner is actually going to be waiting when I get home..but the fries were too tempting to resist.

It seems that the restaurant here is a popular hangout for some of Lindsay’s senior citizen population, as clearly absolutely none of the people eating dinner there tonight are pilots. We seem rather out of place, almost like eating in a retirement residence.

It’s all rather odd, but the food is good. Trying to control myself, I resist trying out the home made butter tarts which by all accounts are to die for, and are frequently mentioned when other pilots talk about the restraurant here at Lindsay.

Anyhow, snack done, we decide to head out.

Thankfully nobody has bothered our plane. The ramp here is surprisingly open - anyone could park their car and pretty much walk up to the aircraft without anyone else batting an eye. I left FOOU with all of our gear (including my GPS) in place - and of course, being rental-aircraft, the door locks don’t work..so it was effectively wide open.

Once again, I brought my GPS along for the ride. There’s absolutely no need whatsoever to have it along for this trip, the nav could not possibly get any easier, but since I’ve gotten my ticket and have actually been allowed to use it (and am flying for periods of time long enough to actually have time to play with it) I’m hooking it up regardless so that I can get accustomed to using it in flight.

My overall impression on using a PDA for a GPS is mixed. The features are unparalleled for the cost, but I still find the screen somewhat difficult to read in varying light conditions. This is more of a fault with my Palm, as opposed to the rest of the hardware, so I can’t really blame it. The jury is still out on whether or not I’ll buy a “proper” Aviation GPS..although all of the flight planning/aviation specific software I can load onto the palm, as well as the fact that Co-Pilot and FlightMaster are *awesome* (and free) GPS utils will make it tough to switch.

Anyhow, we load back in and are shortly on our way. The sun is beginning to set, and the air is now just like glass - now this is nice - I trim out at 3000 feet and the plane flies perfectly on it’s own for about 10 minutes. While keeping an eye out for traffic, I actually get some sightseeing in myself, with the plane now taking care of itself.

Over Scugog island things get interesting. One of the other CFA aircraft (GRPQ) makes a position report and advises that they are heading to the same general location as us, and then back to YOO as well. I reply to give him a heads up, but I can’t see him anywhere.

Some time passes, and neither of us are able to spot RPQ yet. We are conversing to try to spot each other, but we still can’t see him. A third plane chimes in as being northbound, and we spot each other, but I still can’t see my primary concern, RPQ.

I make a 360, still unsure where he is, and feeling paranoid that we are a little too close for comfort. I grab the ATIS at the same time, and then track south again.

We both call into the tower behind each other, and now ATC guy seems equally concerned about our spacing. He asks me to Squawk Ident, but I have to kinly refuse…as FOOU is not transponder equipped. :-)

RPQ reports over a common VFR reporting point - the triple power lines. This doesn’t make me feel any better - we are only 1 mile or so from the lines ourself, and still neither of us can spot him. Grrr.

I ask the tower if they would like me to do a 360 for spacing, but they advise that they have us both in sight, and there is no conflict. Okay then! Whew.

As we join the downwind, we *finally* spot RPQ - just turing base. We follow him in, and I make a perfect full-stall greaser of a landing - barely felt the wheels come down on that one. Whew - I can still do those!

The sun is now touching the horizon, and the winds are dead calm. It’s comfortably warm, and it’s tantalizingly summer-like. Spring is definately (and finally!) in the air.

I help the pilot of RPQ push back into the tiedown, and then my passenger helps me do the same.

When we’re back in dispatch finishing up the paperwork my former instructor is there. He checks out my GPS and has fun with it outside for 5 or 10 minutes, seeming quite impressed with it’s capabilities and versatility. Hmm…perhaps I will keep the Palm based GPS setup afterall - it really is a ton of power for not alot of cost - I’ve under $250 invested in the whole setup.\

So, that’s about it. Another great flight with another enthusiastic passenger.

Hard to say where I’m going from here, at least for the next few weeks. We just finalized the move of our mortgage today (5 year anniversary, yaay!) and the costs to move from our bank to a new mortgage company set us back a good chunk of cash. Add that to the fact that I’m probably going to be laid off from work next week courtesy of a GM truck plant shutdown, and there may not be much spare cash floating around for a while.

…then again, the tax return cash will be due soon. Maybe a week off would be nice afterall.

And last but not least, my new favourite “flying” picture, taken by my pax from this flight. It’s one of the few pictures of myself that I can look at and not publicly exclaim “Crap, I look horrible”..so I guess it’s not that bad. :)

Why Do I Fly?

2006-03-12T09:13:00.000-05:00

NOTICE: Please update your blogrolls/links/bookmarks - Information Echo has now officially moved to www.oshawapilot.ca!

I will continue to echo posts here for a few weeks to allow my readership time to make the move along with me.... Thanks!

Please visit the new site to comment, and catch more up to date posts!

I was reading a post that Clumpinglitter made yesterday where she was musing about exactly why she became a pilot.

Her outcome from having thought about it was that she flies because it’s “Fun”.

A very valid reason.

It made me sit back and think about exactly why I decided to get my own licence.

I decided my reasons were two fold;

First, like C, without a doubt I think it’s fun. My father was a pilot, and I’ve always enjoyed flying. It was only within the last few years that it became financially realistic for me to become a pilot, so I took the dive.

But the’s another half - I enjoy the technical aspects behind flying.

I remember when I was still a student, and an increasing about of the workload of flying was being introduced. It started with radio calls, and progressed to simple things like flap deployment, etc etc. Of course, the workload spiraled upwards from there - but I loved every minute of it.

Everytime a new aspect of a flight became my responsibility instead of my instructors, I just ate it up.

Basically, flying itself is fun, but my favourite parts are departure and arrival. I love being busy on the radio, making adjustments to the aircraft to make it do what I need it to do, and putting all of the aspects of my training together to make the flight successfull.

I remember when I first got my solo clearance to run circuits at Oshawa airport. I was in my glory - it was one takeoff and landing right after another - the things I enjoyed most.

Yes, the novelty quickly wore off simply because I was anxious to proceed to learning another new technical aspect…and running circuit after circuit did start to get a little boring after a while.

But, overall, I’m looking back on circuits now rather fondly again. Actually, it’s about time that I run a few of them again in order to get some extra practice with…you guessed it…the technical aspects of flying.

So, perhaps my flight this weekend may end up with an “Inbound for circuits” radio call instead of a “Inbound for landing, full stop” radio call when returning to CYOO.

It might be time to get back to the technical bits of flying - a single takeoff and single landing on every flight isn’t going to do me any justice when it comes to staying proficient.

And of course, staying proficient is closely related to staying safe….

Warming Up.

2006-03-09T17:42:00.000-05:00

As I was sitting on the apron last Saturday with my passenger, I had to explain to him why we were sitting there doing absolutely nothing for 4 or 5 minutes.

I had already gone through as much of the checklist as I could, I had gotten the ATIS, and we were all situated and ready to depart.

Why were we sitting? I was waiting for the engine to warmup before doing the runup.

Even though the plane was in the hangar overnight, it had been outside for a while before we had gotten there, and it was also rather nippy out, at -10c.

So, in order to go “By the books”, I took the time to properly warm the engine before pushing it beyond idle.

My passenger asked me why this is necessary.

We proceeded to talk about the necessities of warmup in order to minimize engine wear, and avoid nasty things like cracked cylinder heads. I also explained to him the extra precautions that may need to be observed in the winter months when it comes to power-off decents, or other maneuvers which may shock cool the engine.

Regardless, the topic came back to the warmup..and I’ve been thinking about it since.

Yes, I do take the time to do a proper warmup on days where I’m the first pilot to fly the aircraft, or where the aircraft has been sitting for a period of time since the last flight.

Do I enjoy killing the time to accomplish this? No. Do I enjoy paying $1.83 per minute for the process? Hardly.

But, I do it regardless - even though Sundays warmup cost me almost $8 before I even called for a taxi clearnance, I did it right, and paid for it.

Is $8 really that much in the overall perspective of things? Some may say no, but I look at the cumulative effect rather then the per-flight effect. I’ve probably paid over $100 in hobbs time now simply sitting on the apron waiting for that little black needle to bump into the green arc.

It’s frustrating, but I do it.

However, I do see others that don’t follow the rules. I’ve seen pilots jump into a stone cold aircraft, fire it up, and do a full runup shortly thereafter.

Why do they do this? Well, I strongly suspect it’s because they’re not overly excited about paying for the warmup time.

When I was a student at CFA, when the temperature hit a certain point, many lessons would have .1 deducted from the hobbs time in respect of the fact that exceptionally long warmup times were sometimes required. This was fair - I had no problem doing a proper warmup when I was getting an appropriate credit for the time.

However, over the last winter when I was still flying as a solo student, and also since I’ve completed my training and have been renting, I’ve approached dispatch on a few occasions and inquired about receiving a warmup hobbs credit after a fkight.

Of course, I’m legitimate about it, only asking on days where I’ve had to do long warmups as the temperature clearly dictated one.

My requests have been fairly consistently denied. I think I was granted a .1 credit once when the temperature was nearly -18c one day.

The alternatives? Well, others have apparently tried lying about their hobbs times. I don’t agree with this, and apparently those in question were eventually caught.

Option 2 is to simply skip the warmp, and do the runup no matter what the temperature guage says. Again, I don’t agree with this practice - I don’t really want to damage the engine that I’m about to trust to keep me in the sky for the next hour or two.

Option three is to grin and bear it, which is what I’ve been doing.
And I’ll continue to do it simply because it’s the “right thing to do”…but I must wonder if it wouldn’t be cheaper for the FBO’s to be somewhat more liberal with Hobbs credits in order to avoid those who simply don’t follow the rules.

Cracked cylinder heads surely cost money in both labor, parts, and downtime. Wear and tear from an engine runup completed before the oil becomes sufficiently viscous is surely going to shorten the lifespan of the engine as a whole.

There’s so many reason why a proper warmup is essential, yet so many reasons why I’m sure alot of people don’t bother…

Half moved...and a rant.

2006-03-07T22:07:00.000-05:00

I've made the "unofficial" move of the blog to my new www.oshawapilot.ca domain.

I'll continue for the meantime to duplicated my flying related entries here at my trusty old Blogger account (As well as at the new site), but I'll keep my non-aviation related chatter focused over there now, since I can keep it categorized a little better.

My first rant over at the new blog had to do with my new web host, whom after only a week of service had a near complete failure that I tried to inform them of over a three day period, but they didn't take seriously and act upon untill their giant corporate customers started screaming at them come Monday morning.

I was having the issues Saturday, but did they listen to little 'ol me? Noooooo!

Anyhow, I won't rant about it here. Check the details (and this blogs soon to be new permanent home) out at the new Oshawapilot blog location.

For those that link to this blog on their own websites or blogs, I'd appreciate it if you could update your link locations to point to the new site....and thanks for the traffic! :-)

2 Flights, One Day

2006-03-05T22:32:00.000-05:00

(Post duplicated on my still-under-developement Wordpress blog...Check it out HERE for those interested....feedback appreciated...)

Wow, what an aviation-filled day - it just doesn’t get any better then this! A local flight this morning, and then this afternoon an adventure filled cross country from Muskoka.

My morning flight with my enthusiastic passenger Blair went off near perfect. We arrived at the airport shortly after 7AM, and were underway shortly afterwards.

All of my fretting about the W&B was rather moot, as it was fueled perfectly to where I needed it.

The preflight was, as usual, miserable given the cold weather. But, it paid off with an excellent flight in great conditions. We departed southwest initially and circled Blairs workplace so he could take some pictures, and then headed east. Then north. We caught a few of the sights on the way up over Scugog, tracked up towards Lindsay, and then headed west.

Blair has flown gliders before, so he was not new to the world of aviation, although this was his first time in a little (powered) aircraft, so there was some new situations for him. He took the controls for a short while and did quite well, making a 360 orbit within +/- 100 feet - evidence indeed of flying skills. He comments that he’s not able to guage his airspeed by sound alone, as the engine drowns out most of the noise, but he does great.

I took the opportunity to ask Blair if he was interested in doing a little airwork while we were up, since he wasn’t afraid of that sort of thing. He readilly accepted, so I did a HASEL, made an advisory radio call, and got underway. Nothing too big, just a few steep turns and a power off stall.

The steep turns went well - I lost 100′ on my first one (a bit of rust showing) and missed my wake, but rolled out perfectly on my heading. The second one was perfect, and I smacked firmly into my wake on the exit.

The stall was about as gentle as a stall could be, given the wind conditions and the inherent gentle stall characteristics of the ‘52. Blair seemed surprised at exactly how uneventfull the stall really was, so I gather that gliders are a little less forgiving? I’ll probably never know, as I don’t see myself getting into a glider anytime soon. Perhaps next time I’ll do a power on climbing stall, which tend to be a little more eventfull.

Anyhow, we finish up from that, and head home. It was nice to get the opportunity to do some refresher airwork, as staying fresh on the basics is important. Obviously, with a regular passenger, I don’t get the opportunity to do things like steep turns and stalls, so I look forward to flying with Blair more often!
I make a crappy landing thanks to some unexpected wind over the threshhold of 30. Safe landing, yes…gracefull landing, not so much.

Anyhow, that flight complete, I met Richard at the airport at around 10AM, and we piled into our van for the ride up to Muskoka airport.

The weather continues to be amazing, although the winds have picked up a little.

The drive up is uneventfull, and we do alot of chatting enroute. Richard trained at CFA himself, and it was interesting to hear about how similar our training was in some regards, yet different in others. The drive seemed to go incredibly fast - good conversation can make even a boring drive seem like a much shorter event.

When we arrive at the airport, Richards Lake is outside, plugged in, and all ready to go. There’s nobody around at Lake Central (the Lake dealer at the airport) so we get underway.

My wife bids us adieu and advises she will wait around in town for a bit for us to confirm that we are “good to go” before she heads back herself. I’ll text message her to confirm.

The Lake is an interesting creature indeed! This was the first opportunity I had to really get up close and personal with one, so I familiarized myself a little as Richard did the preflight and such. There’s lots of “little things” that are different versus a non-amphibious aircraft - fuel sumps are above the waterline, the door sills are very high..and of course, with the overhead mounted engine, there are no rear windows. The heating system is also unique, involving a 100LL burning combusion-style heater unit which is mounted (externally) to the roof of the cabin, and controlled by a number of switches from inside. Anyone who remembers the old Volkswagen Beetle heater systems can probably draw some associations, but the difference ends there - the one in the Lake actually works, versus the one in the old Beetles, which frequently did not.

The cockpit is interesting as well - some controls are overhead versus the more common placement locations, and the trims are all hydraulically operated, versus old fashioned cable setups.

The trim tabs on the Lake are huge I discover while looking around the exterior. With the engine mounting location, a large amount of trim authority is needed, and there’s no doubt that those monsterous trim tabs provide lots of it.

There is lots of other differences as well, obviously, but I could go on for hours. It’s just a neat aircraft!

Richards wife is unavailable when he calls to file our flight itinerary, so I offer to have my wife provide the service instead. I call her up on the cellphone and relay the necessary information. I provide an ETA for our departure and an ETA for our arrival back at Oshawa, and we pile in.

Unfortunately we then experienced some technical difficulties, and a major screwup on my behalf.

The plane has been sitting for some time, and is less then excited about starting. Despite our best efforts, it just doesn’t want to go.

At one point, we egress the plane to deal with the situation, and I get my foot caught in my headset cable on the way out. I promptly manage to not only faceplant (Surprisingly, gracefully enough that I didn’t get hurt) but I also managed to pull the wires out of the headset - both plugs.

Now I feel like a complete ass - not only have I took a spill, but I screwed up Richards headset which he was so nice as to offer me for the flight.

Anyhow, the long and the short of it is that I owe Richard a new headset. I’ll get the broken one repaired (probably not a huge deal, but repair necessary regardless) and keep it as my own, and supply Richard with a brand new replacement.

I joke that I’ve been looking for an excuse to buy myself a headset sooner then later regardless, and apparently fate is telling me that it’s now time. Unfortunately, this leaves me without a headset for the flight at hand. Oh well, my own fault.
Anyhow, with the problem out of the way and the Lake now up and running, we head down to the opposite end of Muskoka’s seemingly endless 6000 foot runway for the runup. The runway is a mess - probably 95% ice covered at the north end, with better, but still not good, conditions at the south end.

The Lake has no nosewheel steering mechanism, using only differential braking for directional control on the ground - it requires some finesse in order to accomplish this in a gracefull fashion, and it’s obvious that Richard has the “Been there, done that” T-Shirt, as he deftly gets us down the skating rink of a runway and into position for our runup.
The runup produces a miss on one cylinder on the right mag. Uh oh! Nothing in the usual repertoire of plug-clearing methods manages to solve the situation, so wisely we taxi back to the hangar to investigate. I text message my wife to hang around a little longer, just in case…and to let her know that our ETA’s will be changing.

With the helpfull assistance of the “Lake Guy” (I forget his name) we quickly sort out the problem as just an extremely fouled plug. Removed, cleaned, tested, and reinstalled, the engine purrs away quite happilly now.

Underway again! The second runup produces perfect results, and we are set for departure. I text message my wife to let her know we are indeed underway now. They text back that they are shopping. I don’t know if that’s a good thing, but they are apparently having a blast I learn afterwards.

The signifigant horsepower of this plane is immediately evident to me on the takeoff roll, and it quickly pops into the sky and we are away.

The first thing I notice is that the nose-up attitude of the climb seems really low compared to the 152’s. A 1000FPM climb still produces a great view over the nose, and with the wings placed far back on the fueselage (Again, a characteristic of the overhead rear-mounted engine) the view downwards from the cockpit windows is also excellent.

It’s not long, and we are at cruise altitide. I’ve brought along my Palm based GPS system and this flight is giving me the first shot at using it for real-life cross country navigation. It performs excellent.

Richard offers me the controls. Even asking me the question is a little more challenging considering I’m headset-less..no intercom, no radios. Surprisingly, cockpit noise isnt that bad at all, regardless of the fact, but talking still requires a good loud voice.

I accept the opportunity to fly, and actually end up flying a good majority of the cruise. The Lake seems responsive, but heavier on the controls versus what I’m used to…that’s to be expected. The trim controls are between the seats, and are hydraulically operated instead of the wheel style that is more common to me. It’s straightforward, though, and the plane trims into a nice stable cruise.

Richard works the radios as I enjoy the view and fly the course. My GPS shows a groundspeed nearing 130knots at times, so the strong wind from the north is indeed pushing us along at a good clip. Other then for curiosities sake, the GPS is rather redundant - there’s so many easy to pick out landmarks that with todays visibility, VFR nav couldn’t get much easier.

With the tailwind, we make spectacular time, and before it seems like it started, we are on approach to Oshawa.

The different flying characteristics of this plane remain right down the approach, but Richard makes it look easy. I do understand exactly why Lake owners all go through signifigant type rating training, however - these planes are indeed unique machines, and short of straight-and-level, they don’t fly like your average aircraft.

We push back into the parking spot, and tie down. I text message my wife to confirm that we are down, and that she no longer needs to worry about our flight itinerary. They message back, blown away by the time that we made on the return trip.

So, that’s it. I’m now incredibly hyped to make this same trip myself, so I’ll be keeping a close eye out for anyone willing to go halfsies on the cost of a Muskoka cross country.

Any takers? :-)

And last but not least, a big thanks to Richard for graciously offering the opportunity for this experience - I know for a fact that there’s lots of other people that would love to get some time in this sort of plane, and I seem to have jumped the queue. It was fun!

Aaaahh!

2006-03-04T22:39:00.000-05:00

Doing a preliminary W&B for tommorow mornings flight I came to the sudden realization that the plane I was given is a 152 with long range tanks.

I had asked for my plane to be fueled to half tanks for weight consideration, but when I suddenly realised that I was going to be flying a 152 with the long range tanks, that added a sudden moment of concern.

Will it be fueled to "Half long range", or "Half standard"?

If it's fueled to half long range, that means there would be an extra 6 gallons of fuel that I needed to acount for.

That amount of fuel weighs 36 Pounds more....which would put us about 30 Pounds over gross - a no fly situation.

A quick call to CFA revealed that it will be fueled to "Half standard", meaning 12 gallons. Whew!

I will be carefully dipping in the morning to make sure that this is indeed where it is fueled, and that I'll be legally within gross weights, but I don't anticipate any issues.

On the flipside, this change will put me flying one of the 152's that I havn't flown in quite a while, so it will be a refreshing change.

And as of now, the Muskoka flight is sheduled tommorow as well. Richard is meeting me at YOO at 10AM, and my wife is providing the drive north to YQA.

I chatted with Richard a little on the phone this evening and learned a little more about his Aircraft, a Lake LA40. (There a pic posted a few blog entries back). It seems like an extremely interesting aircraft given it's amphibious overhead-pusher configuration.

Anyhow, tommorows blog entry will be a whopper, I'm sure.

Off to bed...6AM comes early, and my reservation is for 7.

The Best Laid Plans...

2006-03-04T00:00:00.000-05:00

...somehow often seem to be blown apart.

At work this afternoon, around 4PM, I suddenly see a bunch of emails arrive on my PDA.

"Reservation Cancelled" ...and shortly after that, another... "Reservation Cancelled".

The emails are coming from the online aircraft reservation system that my FBO uses. They're telling me that both of my reservations (Saturday, and Sunday) have been erased for some reason.

An immediate call to the airport ensues.

Seems one of the 152's has unexpectedly gone down for maintenance, so the schedule is being bandaged based on a "priority" schedule.

Understandably, renters (As opposed to dual student/instructor) flights are pretty low on the priority list, so my flights were cut. Totally understandable yes, but still slightly frustrating, indeed.

Anyhow, it's not their fault, but it does throw all of my plans for the weekend into disarray.

The best I could do to scrape together any remnant of my original plans was to take a 7AM to 9AM booking for Sunday. My intended Sunday passenger passed on getting up that early, but my original Saturday passenger jumped at the opportunity.

There was a 10AM to 12PM slot tommorow that I had originally booked, but I had to pass on it after realising it conflicted with other commitments.

Anyhow, Sunday it shall be.

And shortly after I'm down from that flight, the Muskoka trip (Barring any last minute weather oddities) will be a go.

So, instead of flying three times, I'll be flying twice. No big deal I guess afterall, and I've got a guarenteed passenger for next weekend.

So..I'll stop whining now. :-)

Anyhow, after much frustration, I finally got my blog imported to Wordpress. It was an unbelieveable disaster that should (According to Wordpress) have been a simple process.

The blogger.com import function steadfastly refused to work when executed from my web host... Others (on different web hosts) report the same. It's just...broken.

I was able to import about 50 posts this way, but then it kept hanging. Repeated attempts to restart it would accomplish the import of a few additional posts, but then was also causing duplicates.

It just sucked.

So, as a last ditch effort, I had a thought this evening - I fired up SQL, reinstalled Wordpress on my server box, and tried the import locally using the local copy of Wordpress.

And blammo, it worked perfectly on the first try, and sucked all of my blogger.com posts into the Wordpress database.

So, now what to do... Ideally I'd just copy the SQL database file from my own server to my web host, except they dont allow that without presumably calling into tech support and having some uber-tech do it manually.

Not worth my time, although (based on the one time I actually called, for something minor) my hosts tech support seems excellent. I just picture them all sitting aroung giggling later in the evening after a long day of dealing with "Real" companies and corporate websites, only to be interrupted by little ol' me wanting to fix my blog.

Anyhow, I ended up exporting my local Wordpress installation to a RSS feed. I then took that XML file and went direct for the Import feature again on my "real" Wordpress installation.

It's supposed to take RSS files directly for the import..

Again, easy, right?

Bzzzzt again.

Wordpress continually barfs on the file when I select and upload it.

Multiple attempts, no difference.

Something is telling me that this is a browser problem, so I once again stoop to loading up Internet Explorer, and try it again.

Sure enough, it imports perfectly on the first try.

Mission accomplished!

But why does Wordpress seemingly hate Firefox?

Oh well, at least it's finally done.

As a side-effect, it seems that all of the "republish" attempts (probably about 50 of them) on my blogger account as a result of this import fiasco has resulting in it being flagged as a Splog! (A Spam-Blog).

So, I had to jump through some hoops to request that someone at Blogger manually review it and remove some restrictions now put upon it. Ugh.

So, that aside, my wife is now taking issue with me typing away on the PC at 12:20 in the morning, so it's off to slumberland..

Frustrating.

2006-03-02T23:16:00.000-05:00

Working a little more with my newly registered domain, I've decided to play more seriously with moving the blog from the rather limiting blogger service (Here) to my own Wordpress software.

Wordpress will certainly allow me to do alot more with the blog, and finally leave some of the frustrating aspects of Blogger.com behind.

But, I don't want to loose all of my posts and comments from my 1.5 years here at Blogger. There's simply too much history here to simply brush it off, and start anew.

No problem, right? Wordpress has an import function! Hey - We're all set!

Simply "click click" and all of your Blogger.com posts are supposed to magically import into Wordpress!

Bzzzt! Not so fast.

Turns out the Wordpress import function completely sucks. It doesn't work for the majority of people it seems, based on the plethora of posts on the subject on the Wordpress support forums.

So, now I don't know what to do. It's working...sort of - If you count the successfull import of 1 or 2 posts at a time before it craps out as "Working".

Anyone else out there who has been down this road before have any suggestions?

At 1 or 2 posts per import attempt (Each of which takes about 3 to 5 minutes due to the process that Wordpress goes through) it could take me a long (frustrating) while to successfully complete the process.

I will accomplish it one way or another, but I figure there has to be some sort of easier method.

Doh.

It Arrived

2006-03-01T20:54:00.000-05:00

My official Transport Canada licence arrived yesterday. Asothers have mentioned when they received theirs, it really is a rather nondescript and rather unimpressive piece of paper.

Echoing others, It would be nice if it was some sort of fancy plastic card with a photo - at least it could be used as (rather impressive) personal ID whenever needed. :-)

Oh well, it's the point behind it that counts more so then the presentation, I guess.

The Muskoka flight has not yet happened - Friday is looking like a strong prospect, however.

It's looking as if I might actually end up flying three days in a row - Friday for the Muskoka to Oshawa flight, Saturday with a friend, and Sunday with another friend who wants to give her husband an interesting birthday present.

(To clarify from my original poorly worded version of the above, that's "His wife is paying for his half" of the cost.... Yes, I'm staying within the rules of not being a commercial pilot... :-)

Works for me!

Speaking of Birthdays, mine is tommorow. Flying three days in a row is a good present, no? :-)

Another weekend down the tubes.

2006-02-26T12:25:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was scratched due to the poor weather. That was expected.

The weather this morning is absolutely perfect for flying, although it's -15 Celsius. Preflight would be chilly, but that's fine. Otherwise, it's crystal clear blue skies, and light winds - the best flying we have seen in some time.

Let's go flying, right? Not so fast.

A call to the airport this morning to check on the runway conditions results in a less then stellar response - 80% ice patches. To add insult to injury, based on the winds today, I would assume that 04 is the active...and 04/22 usually gets the lesser of the runway maintenance versus the more important (for the big iron) 12/30.

The guy on the desk job today says to check back in later, as they will be looking for an updated runway condition report.

At 11:15 I called, and informed that nobody is flying today - the CRFI (The Canadian Runway Friction Index) is below .3, which is where the rental policy dictates that nobody shall fly the little planes today.

What exactly is the Canadian Runway Friction Index?

For simplicities sake, I'll provide a brief explanation.

The CRFI is a method that is used to determine of the runway surface conditions are suitable for use by departing or landing aircraft. It's based on a fairly simple set of calculations.

We start by finding the "recommended minimum" CRFI index, which is calculated as part of the crosswind calculation chart.

The crosswind calculation chart is fairly straightforward - every pilot out there has done one of these at some point, as depicted by the picture to the left.

The crosswind component of a runway is very easy to calculate with this chart. You start by simply taking the difference of the wind direction off the runway heading. So, if the runway heading is 300 degrees, and winds are coming from 280 degrees, you have a 20 degree difference.

Then, you take the wind strength. Say, 10 knots, for example.

Taking those two numbers, you plug it into the chart at the left. The 20 degree wind direction difference is applied to the arc. Once you have found the related arc, you follow it down to where it matches the actual wind component, which is marked on the left side of the scale.

Where the two match, you draw a line straight down to the "Crosswind Component" portion of the chart. My example numbers provides an answer of an approximate 3 knot crosswind.

Where do these numbers come into play? General Aviation aircraft have a "Demonstrated crosswind maximim" for which they are certified to fly in. For the Cessna 152, it's demonstrated crosswind is 12 knots. Other planes may be higher, or lower. This is seperate to the friction index, but important regardless to ensure aircraft control can be maintained.

That doesn't mean that you can't takeoff or land with a stronger crosswind, but it's what the POH (Pilots Operating Handbook) states as the recommended safe area. So, basically, you do so at your own peril.

Now, back to the CRFI.

If you extend that line from the above chart a little lower, it will run into the CRFI index below the crosswind component listing. This will provide a "Recommended minimum" CRFI index to allow for a safe takeoff or landing, based on the crosswind conditions you calculated.

My theoretical calculation above shows a recommended mimimum CRFI of approximately 0.22 - so theoretically, if I so choosed, I could takeoff or land with a CRFI reading this low. However, 0.22 is extremly low, bordering on light to no traction whatsoever...more about this shortly.

Again...theoretically, if the wind was absolutely straight down the runway, you could use said runway with a CRFI this low, but it would be a decision which could have great safety consequences. On takeoff or landing, the slightest change in wind direction could result in a loss of aircraft control due to lack of friction with the runway surface.

For our rental policy, a CRFI reading below .3 dictates that nobody shall fly.

How do all these numbers work together? What do the mean?

Wind conditions aside, the actual runway CRFI index is measured using an actual piece of hardware, which takes the runway conditions into effect. It's little more then a decelerometer mounted to a vehicle, which is then run up and down the runway. When the brakes on the vehicle are applied at various points in the run, it provides a deceleration reading. If the vehicles tires have good traction when the brakes are applied, it provides the decelerometer with a high friction reading, as the vehicle stops quicker.

If the tires slip or skid on brake application, then the resulting stop is longer and more gentle - thereby indicating less friction, and less stopping power....basically, a low friction reading.

The readings are averaged over all the provided tests on a particular runway, and then are interpreted into a CRFI number.

The numbers range from zero (A theoretical situation of absolutely zero friction) to a high of one, which is considered maximum.

The AIP (which has since been replaced by the AIM) indicates that a CRFI of 0.8 and up is equivalent to bare and dry pavement. So, you want this number to be high.

Todays runway conditions were reported as icy and snow patches, and the temperature is (or at least was) below -10. Using the CRFI chart above, you can see that this calculates out to a CRFI of somewhere between .1, and .2.

Not only are these numbers below my FBO's minimums, but they are also below the "acceptable recommended" CRFI index based on todays real life winds and crosswind calcuations, as per the first chart.

So, it all comes down to safety.

Unfortunately, as runway conditions deteriorate, the CRFI drops. Once it reaches the point where safety is effected, planes don't fly.

So, instead of just firing up the engine right about now, I sit at home blogging about it instead.

But, I guess the old adage applies - better safe then sorry.

But it sure is tough none the less looking outside at the bright blue sky, knowing that I can't go enjoy it.

Weekend Update

2006-02-24T22:57:00.000-05:00

Quick update.

1/ I've got a reservation to fly tommorow. Since we're under a snowfall warning, and it's not supposed to taper off untill the afternoon (at which point the runways will likely be a mess) I doubt it will happen.

2/ Backup reservation is made for Sunday!

3/ I tweaked the Blog template a little more. I'm still not sure I like it. I'm playing with Wordpress as I speak (I finally got PHP/SQL to play nice on my home server) and I'm debating the possibilities of moving the blog over to it, on my new domain. The jury is still out on this. I still need reliable (non home based) server space to host it on, and I'm not sure I really want to pay for that. :-)

Anyhow, blue skies, everyone.

Electricity..

2006-02-22T18:27:00.000-05:00

It's something we've all become accustomed to. Our lives revolve around it, even though few of us stop to think about what life would be without it in todays modern times.

I was walking through my favourite guy-store today and came across the line of power Inverters. For those not in the know, a power inverter takes 12 Volts DC and converts it to 120 Volts AC - basically, household current.

The advantages? Places where there is no access to AC current (camping, cottage, in your car) you can now have the luxury of such.

Why was I thinking about this? Well, the upcoming trip to Oshkosh will be pretty much devoid of electricity at our campsite, as I understand it.

Is this a big issue in the broad scheme of things? Not really - I'm used to camping without power, and not being able to bring along all the "Creature comforts" of home isn't a huge deal for the duration of the Oshkosh trip. Besides, getting away from all of the technology of everyday life is what camping is about, no?

As long as I can keep my PDA/Cellphone charged, and have a few sets of extra batteries on hand for my digital camera, it's all good. For me, and for the nature of this trip, those two items are necessities.

But, I'm considering getting a new inverter (or a generator) for use outside of camping.

Inverters are pretty common now, with small inverters being available for the $20 to $30 range. I own a 300 Watt version myself, which is compact enough to not be overly bulky, yet powerfull enough to run some light equipment. It will not, however, power larger household items such as appliances - it simply does not output enough power.

It also requires a 12 Volt power source - be it a car, or a battery bank.

I have another "backup power" device in my garage - a Motomaster Powerbox, which is an 'all-in-one' power solution. It too, however, is too small to power large appliances, although it is convenient for camping and travelling. I suspect this little unit will come along for the trip to Oshkosh to at least provide a few days of (albeit limited) 120 Volt power for us to keep our digital cameras and phones charged up.

During the blackout in 2003 that plunged the entire eastern seaboard of the USA and Canada into darkness for a full day (up to 2 or 3 in some areas), our small inverter came to the rescue, powering some essential equipment at my workplace for many hours, and then running flat-out again in the evening here at home to provide us with at least minimal power. While everyone else was sitting in their pitch black houses trying to make their way from room to room, we had our living room lights on, the TV and satellite box up and running to stay on top of the news, and believe it or not, we were surfing the internet for a short while.

Then, we turned it all off, and went outside to mingle with all of the neighbours who were out socializing in the pitch black dark.

It was really a unique situation, as anyone who experienced it could attest to. The sense of community was amazing as everyone mingled out into their backyards, and up and down the street socializing. I met people on my street that I had never met before. And of course, it was amazing to be able to actually see the night sky in all it's glory in the usually light-polluted city.

Anyhow.. back on topic. The inverter did come in extremely usefull regardless of the fact that for the limited number of hours we were in the dark, we could have done without it.

However, when it came to plugging in our fridge or chest freezer, we were out of luck - 300 watts was simply not enough.

Thankfully it was rather moot - our electricity came back on at about the 17 hour point, so we didn't loose anything in either or fridge or freezer. Others were not so lucky.

So, todays trip through the guy-store had me thinking about the luxury that we have all come to appreciate - electricity. I was thinking that perhaps it was time to invest in a larger inverter, or perhaps a small generator.

If the power goes out again, it's less of a problem - plug the inverter into one of the cars in the driveway, run an extension cord to required electical item, and plug it in. For a few hours of outage, it's not worth bothering with backup power, but for a day or more, the losses start to mount, so a backup power source would quickly pay for itself.

Is something as serious as the 2003 blackout likely to happen again? It's difficult to say - the blackout back then was due to the "perfect storm" of failure througout the grid which resulted in a massive failure and shutdown of generating stations everywhere. I was in Pickering Ontario at the exact moment of the failure here in Ontario. Pickering is home to the Pickering A and Pickering B Nuculear generating station - 8 reactors - a massive facility. I was within sight of it when things went dark.

Shortly after the lights went out, the next thing I heard was massive roars from the nuclear facility as they vented steam to the atmosphere. The clouds were amazing to see, although a little concerning - It was the first minutes of what was clearly a major blackout, and then seeing a sight like that from the nuclear facility was a little disconcerting.

The reactors were Scraming due to the completely uncontrolled nature of the grid collapse. It was a real mess, but at least it was safe.

The following days were an adventure as the grid slowly came back online. A nuclear reactor takes up to 48 hours to restart after shutdown, and with the majority of Ontario relying on these nukes, it meant several days of power shortages.

Anyhow, the long and the short of it was that although we had power, we didn't have much of it. Those who didn't conserve (AKA leaving the air conditioners off) threatened to throw the rest of us who *did* back into darkness.

Additionally - with the way that the government of Ontario has bungled our energy policy and failed to think ahead, it's entirely possible that temporary blackouts may become more common. Anyhow who lives here has become accustomed to hearing frequent "Energy Appeals" during the summer months as the grid strains under the load of humming A/C units. At several points last summer Ontario Hydro warned us that we were bordering on system failure due to the loads, and they resorted to voltage reductions (Brownouts, basically) to keep the system up and running.

Sad...and somewhat scary. Our hydro system here in Ontario is extremely fragile right now, and due to the rapid pace of expansion versus the foot-dragging on the energy policy by our government, a crisis is very near.

Having some sort of standby or backup power beyond my tiny little inverter would be nice.

I've noticed a signifigant increase in people with generators or large inverters in their garage since the blackout. "Be prepared" is the story. Most of us still remember the blackout, and it was a wakeup call for everyone, making us all realize that even something as 'routine' as electricity can dissapear.

I didn't jump on the "Buy a generator" bandwagon then, but I'm thinking about it now.

If the power went out this time of year, we would be in serious trouble within a matter of hours - the house would be getting increasingly cold, we'd have no method of cooking or heating, and the pipes would start freezing solid within 24 hours or so, depending on the outside temperature.

In the summer, the lack of A/C is not a huge deal, but loosing hundreds of dollars worth of food in our Fridge/Freezers is a big deal. Shivering in the cold in the winter is a big deal as well.

So, backup power has a year-round appeal.

And it would also lend itself to trips like Oshkosh (or camping) where power isn't immediately available, but would still be handy.

So, I'm looking very seriously at the possibilities...

Slow weekend..

2006-02-19T23:15:00.000-05:00

Although I had hoped to grab a quick flight this weekend, it wasn't to be.

I had a passenger and a plane booked, but a quick review of the bank balance suggested that I refrain. Instead, I went out for an hour this afternoon for coffee with a friend.

A much less expensive, if not quite as exciting, option.

I emailed Richard earlier to see if the ferry flight of his Lake LA40 from Muskoka back home to Oshawa may be on, but have not yet heard back. The weather is looking decent, so if he decides it's a go, and gets ahold of me in time, tommorow may be the day.

I'm still greatly looking forward to this.

That aside, I spent some time this weekend playing computer-nerd. I found a good deal on .ca domain registrations on Saturday, so I registered oshawapilot.ca

After redirecting the domain to a free DNS server (Thanks zoneedit.com!) to avoid the hassle of running one myself, and then waiting for that all to propogate, my domain works, now pointing to my desktop PC at home.

Yipedy Doo!

So, what to do with it now?

I doubt I'll move the blog there, as my home PC (And ISP) is hardly an ideal web hosting solution. It's reliable and always on, but I doubt my ISP would really like me that much if I went with that plan.

Additionally, I was reminded of my lack of savvness with PHP/SQL today while I was playing around with Wordpress. Without either of those (Working properly and securely, that is) the home server ideal isn't good for much except what I'm using it for - a video/image server.

Yes, I could shell out the few dollars per month and get some real server space. Is it worth it though? I don't use my webserver for a great deal, so I'm not sure. I'm currently hosting the videos I posted a few days ago on it, and that's been working just fine, but otherwise I'm not sure it's worth my effort based on my current needs.

So, basically, the new domain is just for "Decorative Purposes Only" at this point. It points to my Apache server, displays a picture, and then just redirects here.

The picture was taken at the CN Tower Restaurant last summer, for anyone interested. That's CYTZ (Toronto City Center Airport) in the background.

And no, I didn't eat all of that by myself.

And yes, what I did eat of it was extremely good.

And the whole CN Tower restaurant routine was very expensive...but great. :-)

So, yes - that was my weekend. Completely devoid of anything flying related except to pop into the terminal to check on my new vending machine there.

Oh well, there's always next weekend.

Oshkosh, here we come!

2006-02-15T22:45:00.000-05:00

(Dances little jig) :-)

I made an entry here a few days ago musing about the possibility of getting a few local pilots (or aviation enthusiasts) together to share the cost of driving to Oshkosh for the annual EAA Airventure...or "Oshkosh" as it's best known.

I've got a van, I enjoy camping (Which is about all that's left accomodation-wise now, without booking 2 years in advance) and it seemed like my best bet to finally get myself to this iconic aviation expo.

My wife was good with the plan, and I thought I'd start the ball rolling with my post. I've since unpublished said post...why?

Shortly after I published it I received a comment to my post from Paul Tomblin who asked me if I'd be interested in flying there with him.

My immediate response was "Wow, I'd love to, but I just can't afford it".

Yes, I had always dreamed of making the trip to Oshkosh "The way it should be done" - on a set of wings. However, my licence doesn't allow me to fly as PIC in the USA, nor is my experience anywhere close to the level that I would feel comfortable setting out on such a trip myself, even if my ticket allowed me to do so.

And of course, there's the money. With the planes I fly on a rental basis, there's so much to take into consideration that makes it unrealistic - Actual hobbs hours (And alot of them, at 90 Knots), minimum rental hours (3 per day minimum every "full day" the plane is gone, regardless of it it moves or not), and then of course fuel, etc etc etc.

That, and the fact that my FBO wouldn't rent me a plane for this trip even if I had bottomless pockets and the best laid plans.

Again, back to experience.

Driving was the only feasable way I figured I was going to get to Oshkosh, so it's the immediate avenue I steered towards.

However, I exchanged a few emails with Paul over the next hour or two, and it became evident that the chance for me to fly into Oshkosh as his flying companion, instead of driving, was now obtainable.

I was almost speechless - it's a good thing I was typing, otherwise I may have found myself short for words. That never happens to me - anyone who reads my blog or has chatted with me on the phone can attest to the fact that I'm quite verbal.

But.....Wow!

I can't express how excited I am about this. Oshkosh itself is an event I've always wanted to visit. Ironically, as part of my job, I've been to the city of Oshkosh before, but never during AirVenture, so I've always longingly looked at the city in my mirrors as I passed through, hoping to one day be able to actually come during the big show.

Of course, as Paul mentioned in another followup email yesterday, the weather could play havok with our goal, especially when one is flying this sort of distance...but hey, that's OK.. I'll take it as it comes, and my schedule will be wide open for the entire week.

Yes, the actual show was originally my intended centerpiece of the trip - the drive there in a car was simply a stepping stone to make that happen.

However, flying there versus driving opens up an entirely new (and amazing) experience in itself. I'm now looking forward to the trip there and back as much as the destination. What more could one ask for?

The plane that Paul has booked for the trip? A stunning Piper Dakota.

I was checking out the Rochester Flying Club's website tonight to checkout N8323Y, which is the plane that Paul advises he has reserved for the trip. It looks like it's a great aircraft. He mentioned it's due for a new panel mount GPS installation, as well as a new engine over the next few months.

With a 76 Gallon fuel capacity and useful load of 1200 Pounds, weight should not be an issue, even considering all of the gear that will be hitchiking along with us. This will be a refreshing change from the usual W&B challenges I have been having recently flying the 152's around, aside from the fact that it's just exponentially a much nicer aircraft versus anything I've flow in to date.

So, only one problem now.

5 Months, 1 Week, and 2 Days. The time untill the gates swing open in Oshkosh. :-)

BTW, I'm looking for a right-seat passenger for this Sunday at 9AM after a potential passenger (Co-worker) bailed out on me today. Anyone local interested in an hour of sightseeing? If the weather holds, I'm thinking about breakfast in Peterborough? Email me!

Twice in a week!

2006-02-11T13:23:00.000-05:00

Wow, it's been a long while since I've been up flying twice within a few days.

Today marked my second passenger, and one who was fittingly appropriate - my cousin Steve, who was along for the familiarization flight the very day I got officially hooked on flying in the summer of 2004.

Shortly after this flight, I officially became a student....and here we are!

There's video - click the pic to check it out..

(There's also a video of my approach and landing at the bottom of this entry)

Getting a plane arranged was a bit of an adventure. Thanks to "b" at Canadian Flight Academy for handling my multiple phone calls and requests.

We showed up early to triple-confirm that it was fueled according to what I needed in order to be legal for W&B. The plane was just leaving for another flight when we got there, and I was told it would return with the fuel probably in the range of what we required..

I've came to the conclusion that I really need to get checked out on the 172 - the anemic weight carrying capacity of the 152's meant that todays flight could almost not happen, as we were dancing right on the edges of staying legal.

I had to put the 5# flightbag on the back wall where the W&B Arm was 94 in order to push ourselves back into the envelope. Gross was another concern, hence my obsession with the fuel in the tanks.

But, it all worked. Barely. :-)

We went out and killed some time at Future Shop (Think Best Buy, for my American readers) and returned just as FOOU was cresting the numbers on 04 on it's return. Great timing.

Runway 04 is the active, and I picture ourselves getting stuck in a lineup of planes waiting for the bactrack from Bravo taxiway, but surprisingly when I call the tower when ready to depart, I get a backtrack and takeoff clearance immediately - there's two other planes in the circuit, but they're not in our way.

A cautious backtrack ensues, as the end of 04 is snow covered and slippery. Turned around, it's full power, and we're off.

The conditions were OK, but once again attention to the VFR minima were required. On departure I had filed for 2500 feet, but at 2000 I realized we were about as high as we were going while still maintaining minimums. Visibility was about 15 miles I would guess, depending on what direction you were looking, so that wasn't so much an issue as the clouds were.

I advise the tower of our revised altitude and they check remarks, and clear me enroute at the same time.

I don't really like flying this low - I feel like I'd be pressed to find a forced landing location in the unlikely chance one was necessary. I know that that's probably unwarranted, as the area we are flying over is full of nice open fields, but I still feel like I should be higher regardless. My comfort level begins at around 2500, and I feel better yet in the 3000 range.

As we trekked east the skies opened up and I climbed briefly up to 3000 for a better view. Steve snaps pictures as we pass over his old house, and continue along eastwards.

We turn north, and the clouds are low again ahead of us, so I decend back to around 2300.

I get some good exercise in pilotage as he requests we fly over to a location that we both spent alot of time at as kids. (Long story)

I know where it is, so I plot out our current location using references on the map, and point us in the general direction of where I believe we should head - and blammo - there it appears, right off the right side of the nose.

Funny how that works! :-)

We circle for a few minutes and Steve snaps pictures. Although it's certainly not the first time I've flown over it, it is the first time I've picked it out from the air and actually spent some time sightseeing over it from aloft, so it's kind of cool.

However, I'm discovering that there is one downside to being PIC, versus just being "Along for the ride" - it's that you can't just spend time gawking out the window at the sights - one must actually concentrate on flying the plane.

My training comes back to me, as I'm mentally reminded that spiral dives most often begin with the "Hey, look down there at that!" circling turn routine. The pilot spends too much time looking out a side window, and before long the nose drops and airspeed is heading through the roof.

Don't get me wrong, I look down and catch some views, but I keep my main concentration on flying. I can always look at the pictures later.

We head up over the lake and checkout all the ice huts and snowmobile tracks. For having been such a mild winter, I'm surprised there's as much happening on the ice as there appears to be...especially considering on Wednesday a good portion of the lake on the eastern end was wide open.

This is the same parts of the lake that I used to snowmobile on as a kid in the 70's and 80's. Caution was needed as it never really froze more then a foot or so thick near our cottage area, but to see it wide open for a mile or so in the beginning of February attests to the mild winter we have had.

All the more reason I question the ice huts, although they are quite a ways west on the lake, and presumably the ice is a great deal thicker there. Hmm.

Perhaps a little early, I figure we'll head back. Over Port Perry we call the tower.

The active has changed from 04 to 12 - I'm not exactly dissapointed about this.

Tower reports another 152 climbing out to our exact altitude. I don't see it, nor does Steve, and when I tell them this they ask me to stay on the West side of Simcoe street, and the other plane on the east side. Eventually he reports clear of the zone behind us, although we never did spot him.

The only other traffic is a single 152 just turning base - easy to pick out.

Unlike my last flight, I make a gracefull approach followed by another landing which I'm quite proud of (See video below - my passenger filmed it with his digital camera, and it came out great!)

Landings like this me realize exactly how far I've come since the last time I took video of my landings, which were quite alot.. *ahem*....firmer, back then. :-)

I exit at Charlie and do the post landing checks. Tower passes me off to ground, and I get a clearance to the north apron.

As short as it was, it felt like the (almost) perfect flight - if only it wasn't for those pesky clouds.

And another logbook entry ensues.

Gotta love it.

Streamer Vs. Clippers

2006-02-10T18:34:00.000-05:00

I noticed that Clumpinglitter linked to my blog today after suffering a flight cancellation due to an Alberta Clipper.

She quotes a statement I had made from one of my earlier posts where I had referred to a snow "Streamer" causing problems with one of my intended student solo flights.

Her post this evening about having one of her own flights cancelled as a result of an Alberta Clipper made me curious to look into the differences.

At the time, I posted this radar image.

The radar shot was from the Environment Canada website, and shows a great example of "Streamers" in action.

What exactly is a streamer? I found a good explanation at this website. With credit to the website, here's a quote:

Lake-generated snow squalls form when cold air, passing for long distances over the relatively warm waters of a large lake, picks up moisture and heat and is then forced to drop the moisture in the form of snow upon reaching the downwind shore. Lake-effect snows are common over the Great Lakes region because these large bodies of water can hold their summer heat well into the winter, rarely freeze over and provide the long fetch which allows the air to gain the heat and moisture required to fuel the snow squalls. Lake-effect snows are most pronounced and effective wherever terrain features such as small hills or mountains are oriented along the lee shores.

...

Most often, lake-effect snowfalls take the form of light to moderate flurries spread over a broad but still limited area. However, an individual squall of heavy snow may remain over one small area for several hours and then, with a shift in the wind direction, move to drop its snow on another area. Satellites and radar observations show that lake-effect snow clouds most often occur in bands resembling streamers. These bands usually form over the lake and are swept inland by the winds.

So, the "Streamers" that I frequently refer to are basically lake effect snow.

Those who don't live near large bodies of water like we do here in the southern Ontario region have probably never experienced streamers. However, with the great lakes being part of the weather generators for all that live near them, we get used to the strange weather that can result.

If you compare this Google Maps image of the Great Lakes to the radar image above, you can see that the streamers on the radar shot are coming off of Georgian Bay. Lake Huron, just to the west of the bay, is another formidable generator of lake effect snow for my area.

Lake Ontario, which I live on the shores of, is also a huge lake effect (And streamer) generator, although it effects generally the western and southern side of the lake. Ask anyone who lives in the Niagara region, or Buffalo/Rochester area of New York about lake effect, and you'll get stories about being slammed by it, while surrounding areas see nothing in the way of accumulation.

This is one of the characteristics of streamers - the area directly underneath them get large amounts of snow, with sudden force. As quickly as they appear, they can disperse, or shift direction or location so as to suddenly dissapear from a specific area, but simply move elsewhere.

Just earlier this week I experienced the brunt of a large streamer coming off of Georgian Bay while working in the eastern Toronto area. While we were crawling along the highway in the 6 inches of accumulation that had fallen within an hour, the west side of Toronto was still clear and dry.

So, going back to Clumpinglitters Alberta Clipper, I looked the term up, since although I've heard of them before, I didn't believe they are something we frequently experienced here in Ontario, nor was the science behind the system clear to me.

With credit to The Weather Notebook:

Alberta Clippers are storms born east of the Canadian Rockies on Alberta's high plains. Once formed, Clippers sail southeastward into the Dakotas and Minnesota, and then steer across the Great Lakes toward the Atlantic Coast. This track leaves them hundreds of miles away from the moisture sources of the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, so Clippers generally don't deposit huge snowfalls, usually just a few inches of light, powdery flakes. Still, their strong, frigid winds produce true blizzard conditions, due to severe blowing and drifting. A mature Clipper can sport winds of 40 miles per hour, with gusts to 60.

...

Alberta Clippers sail under the push of a northwesterly jet stream. Often they are followed by bitter outbreaks of polar air, known as the Siberian Express, which continue for days after the low has moved off. Strong northerly winds and bitterly cold temperatures leave behind dangerous windchills, ground blizzards, and days of whiteout conditions where surface visibility is nearly zero.

It makes sense that Clumpy is familliar with the term, since Minnesota (Where I believe she is located) is one of the first regions in the US shown as suffering from the effects.

However, a clipper appears to be a different entity versus a streamer. Additionally, after referring to the areas that they tend to cover, and understanding them a little better, I believe that we do suffer from the latter (less nasty) effects of them on the odd occasion.

Overall, which one sounds nastier? The clipper, without doubt.

As I suggested in my other post, a streamer is like a flock of seagulls - they fly in unexpectedly, crap all over everything, and then often dissapear as quickly as they arrived.

So, it can be sunny and clear at Noon. Suddenly at 12:30 a streamer blows in, and over the next 20 to 40 minutes (on average) it's suddenly a blast of winter in the worst way - heavy blowing snow, winds, and accumulation. Then, the winds shift or the streamer blows itself out, and it's all over.

The clipper sounds like once it arrives, it's going to be resident for a few days.

Anyhow, after my curiousity was aroused from C's post, I learned a little something today, and thought I'd share it here.

So, what else is happening? I've got another sightseeing flight scheduled for tommorow, but it's not going off without some amount of difficulty....scheduling issues again with the aircraft.

Good old FOOU came back online today after a few days of being down for propeller issues, but it's got more fuel then I can carry for the intended flight, while remaining legal for weight and balance.

The other 'lighter' planes that I need are in the same boat, or already booked.

So, someone else needs to fly FOOU or GZJS first, and leave the aircraft at half tanks on return. That pushes the plans back a little, and makes the reality of the flight actually happening a little tougher to assure.

Hopefully it still works out, but if not, I can't complain - I flew Wednesday, and will hopefully be up again with Richard (See the last few blog entries) sometime next week, weather permitting.

It's nice finally having my ticket. :-)

First passenger.

2006-02-08T16:06:00.000-05:00

Despite a near last minute collapse of the plans, my official "first passenger" flight went off.

I had the day off work for a doctors appointment in the morning, so I had plenty of time to arrive at the airport ahead of time and finish up some paperwork, and preflight the plane.

Unfortunately, it was not to be quite that easy.

When I arrived, I checked in on what aircraft I had been assigned. "The broken one" was the answer, along with a wry grin.

What?

Apparently GZSU's engine had "hiccuped" on someone earlier, and there was some concern about it's airworthyness as a result. Understandably, it was grounded. The mechanics had not yet looked at it, and would not likely be doing so anytime soon I was told.

"What other 152's are available?" I proceeded to ask. "None, unfortunately" is the answer.

Gaaah! Am I to be foiled once again?

Thankfully, after the exchange, he sets forth on a mission to secure me a plane afterall, knowing that this was an important flight for me. He manages to accomplish a miracle, and somehow jiggles the schedule around in such a fashion that a 152 becomes available for me afterall.

Your the man!

GYYG is not the best plane weight wise (It's one of the heaviest 152's) but it was thankfully fueled to only 1/2 tanks, and my passenger was fairly light.

A weight and balance calculation later, and I confirmed it would work just fine.

Whew!

I finished up the required paperwork, and reviewed and signed the new renters policy that I'm now flying under, as opposed to the student policy.

However, my intention to get the preflight out of the way ahead of time was now rather shot, but I didn't complain - I could just as easilly have been packing my flight bag away and heading home.

When my sister showed up, I escorted her out into the cold towards the plane - it was over at the hanger instead of the apron, so it was a bit of a trek. Preflighting wasn't fun for her, I could tell.

That out of the way, we piled in and I gave her the preflight briefing.

Thankfully the plane had been up recently, and the cowl blankie had kept as much heat as possible in, so after startup we got interior heat fairly quickly. I was glad for the fact, since I had taken off my (extremely bulky) winter jacket and stowed it in the back.

There's a plane doing something strange in the circuit, and despite my attempts to call ground they ignore me in the interest of sorting out the circuit traffic first.

Understandable, but it leaves us hanging for about 3 or 4 minutes while the lady in the tower deals with the other plane on the tower frequency before she gets to me on ground. I wait patiently.

We're cleared to the apron... Checklist done, another taxi clearnace in hand, and we are up shortly thereafter.

Time is short unfortunately, so I decide to make the most of the sightseeing possibilities. I head north in initially, and then once we reach lake Scugog I track northeast towards the end of the lake to overfly our (Now former, unfortunately) cottage.

My sister admits to being completely disoriented and lost, barely able to distinguish the location of our cottage. I point out towns and landmarks, and she continues to seem disoriented.

I remember being this way myself when I first started out, so I completely understand what she's going through.

She's madly snapping pictures, still rather oblivious of where we are, but seemingly happy to be there.

I turn south and pickup the 35/115 highway and track it south. We circle over Mosport International Speedway for a few pictures, and continue south towards Newcastle/Bowmanville.

I cautiously let her take the yoke for a shor period of time, as she expresses interest in trying the whole "flying" thing out for herself. My fingers hover nearby just in case. She does good, but has the typical issues maintaining pitch attitude...that once again, I'm pretty sure I had problems with myself at zero hours. :-)

45 minutes down, and I'm watching the clock - she needs to be back on the road at 2:30.

Westward we head. I spot another plane at our 11 O'clock high and I initially can't distinguish if he is heading towards, or away from us. After a few seconds it's clear he's heading away from us, but at the edge of the control zone he banks hard left and turns around. I keep a close eye on him as he blasts eastward, eventually ending up behind us.

Grab the ATIS. Call the tower.

Onward we trek.

A few miles out and I'm apparently spacing out, as I don't see the airport untill I'm way too close to make a gracefull approach.

I adjust, and make it as gracefull as possible, now somewhat upset at myself for having screwed that up. The rest of the flight had been perfect up untill that point.

The landing is into a stiff crosswind, and a hefty slip is needed, but it's all gracefull in the end and a nice "1, 2, 3 wheel" landing results, right smack on the centerline. My sister comments that she barely felt us touch down.

Actually, she seems surprised that she didn't feel us touchdown. I think she was expecting something much firmer. :-)

And that, for all intents and purposes, was the flight.

The thing I noticed most was that time seems to go much slower when you are not concentrating on a lesson plan, or what exercise you should be doing next. With just "Aviate, Navigate & Communicate" on the schedule, the hour we were up actually seemed like an hour.

A refreshing change!

Next flight? Not sure right now - probably next weeks cross country with Richard and his Lake LA40, as per my last blog entry.

And beyond that, I'm on the lookout for anyone willing to share the cost on a 152.

Co-workers, friends, and familly beware - I have a ticket to fly! :-)

Tommorow, and a Lake.

2006-02-07T19:11:00.000-05:00

Confused?

Tommorow has to do with yet another attempt at logging my first passenger. I've got a reservation from 12:30 untill 2:30, and hopefully the weather plays nice. It's looking, well, just OK. The best prospect for a long while at least, according to the once again dismal forecast.

I actually almost threw my hands up in the air and cancelled again earlier today. While I was sitting and eating lunch, I came across the weather forecast in the paper, and it showed what was sure to be a complete washout for tommorow.

Huh?

I thought that was strange, since the forecast I had read earlier in the day was looking completely different.

It's then that I realized I was reading last
Tuesdays paper, instead of this Tuesdays. Somehow I hadn't read it last week, and it was still sitting in my work vehicle...and I managed to pick it up and treat it as if it was todays paper.

Apparently I need to stop collecting newspapers in my work vehicle, and take them out to bring home and recycle more often. Duh!

Another look at the real forecast on my Blackberry resulted in a more suitable outlook - cloudy with sunny breaks. I'll take it, as long as the winds and ceiling don't become an issue, and there's no wild streamers coming off the lakes.

So, continuing...What's the "Lake" all about?

I was contacted a few days ago through my blog by a fellow pilot (Richard) who flies out of Oshawa. He offered to let me tag along for the trip back from CYQA (Muskoka Airport) to Oshawa, as he was going to be heading up there to retrieve his Lake LA-4 180 (See picture above) after it's annual.

The LA-4 is not only a unique airplane that I'd love to fly in, but the YQA to YOO hop is one I've been looking forward to doing, so I jumped all over the opportunity.

The LA-4 is a standout amongst the usual Cessna and Piper bugsmashers at Oshawa airport, so it's easy to pick out. After Richard sent the above picture earlier today, I can recall seeing this plane overhead Oshawa quite a few times before. To get to actually fly in it would be great!

Thankfully Richards schedule appears flexible, as this week is bad for me (Beyond tommorow, for which plans, albeit cancellable, already exist) and the weather outlook is not great as well for the near future.

Additionally, the dealership that the aircraft is located at is not open weekends, so it's going to have to be a weekday pickup.

So, plans for next week are officially in play, providing the weather clears up and Richard is still willing to let me tag along.

Between the adventure that Richard has offered, and the likelyhood of a get-together and flight in the Piper Lance that Paul has suggested we should aim for, I stand the chance to get a great deal of exposure to aircraft that I would likely otherwise not get a chance to get anywhere near.

..and of course, I look forward to meeting both of them.

On another subject, for any Canadian pilots who may be reading here, Richard actually had an article published in the current issue of the Canadian Owners & Pilots Association (COPA) magazine. The article chronicled his first solo cross country flight - the same flight that I did myself a few weeks ago.

His, however, was quite alot more exciting then mine, to say the least. Actually, it was a downright adventure...due to no fault of his own. :-)

I'd republish the story here, but without the agreement of COPA I may end up in trouble for doing so, but for any other Canadian pilots out there with the current COPA magazine nearby, check out his article.

I read it myself about three weeks ago. I was surprised to see an article from a fellow Oshawa student, so that simple fact made it all the more interesting for me to read. When Richard emailed me earlier today and mentioned that he had recently been published, that little light bulb in my head lit up, and I made the connection between who I had been chatting with in email, and the author of the article!

Blogging is one thing, but getting your story published in the COPA magazine is another - congrats Richard!

So... By this time tommorow night I will hopefully have logged my first passenger, and will have another milestone to blog about.

And one last note - another congratulations goes out to Aaron over at Bad Attitude Pilot - he Solo'd over the past weekend. Check out his story - any former student can always relate to a student suffering from perma-grin after doing their solo. :-)

A rebuttal!

2006-02-05T11:03:00.000-05:00

A reader recently responded to my post from a few days ago about Toronto City Center Airports expansion plans. You can find the thread here, including his response.

My initial thought after reading his response was that this was obviously someone who was entirely on the other side of the fence on the airport issue. His wording made no secret that he's no fan of City Center, and that he doesn't agree with alot of what I had to say about it.

And hey, there's nothing wrong with that. I'm entirely democratic about this whole situation, and I'm not going to delete the (very valid) response in the interest of pushing my viewpoint, and censoring all others.

But I did offer a rebuttal.

Once again, I think his post is a good weathervane, providing some insight on how the community that lives in the immediate vicinity of the airport feels about the expansion.

But, the concerns still seem to revolve around the 'Feeling' that YTZ is going to become another Pearson international, or that the increased flight traffic will turn the surrounding area into a wasteland, as "nothing good" can happen around a "noisy airport".

The reality is that alot of the fears about the City Center expansion are not really warranted, and are based on fearmongering by the people that run Toronto, and in many aspects, the media as well.

City Center will not become a Pearson Internation, a JFK, an O'Hare, or any other major international "hub" of large jet traffic.

Why? It's just not big enough, plain and simple. It's also limited to a total of 167 movements per day, total. For those not familliar with such, a "movement" is a takeoff or landing - anytime wheels touch ground. So, each landing and subsequent takeoff is 2 movements.

Total that up, and that means that the combination of the new airline, the existing Air Canada Jazz traffic, and any other transient GA traffic (Cessna 152's, other little bugsmashers) will equal about 80 flights per day.

The new airline has publicy said that they will be "Well below" that limit, either way.

Now, even if this limit didn't exist, you're still never going to see huge jetliners or otherwise flying into City Center - the runways simply are not long enough to allow this.

A quick look at the airport diagram reveals that the longest runway (08/26) is only 4000 feet.

The only runway that could be readilly expanded even slighly is 15/33, and the amount of length that could be gained is negligible.

Anyhow, in the interest of not blabbering on for ever and ever about this subject (Which will inevitably come up again) I'll leave everyone with this article by Sue-Ann Levy in todays edition of the Toronto Sun.

It discusses the matter, brings up some usefull information, and dispells some myths that are being perpetuated.

As I said in my response to the other threads comments, I suspect that in a year or two, this will all be completely moot - the flights will be continuing as planned, hopefully the new airline is going strong, and all of the misinformation that has been spread about the whole situaiton will be dispelled.

Yes, people that live around the airport will still be angry about it..in many communities, that's the situation.

But, there are two sides to every story, and more often then not the "Negative" sides are the ones that contain the most misinformation and unwarranted fears.

Touchy subjects

2006-02-03T20:26:00.000-05:00

After my planned "first passenger" flight with my sister fell apart, I started hunting for an alternate, be it familly, a coworker, or friend.

Now, always in the back of my head when it comes to flying Cessna 152's is the issue of weight. It's no secret that I'm not a small guy - at 6'2", and with the frame of a football player, it's amazing to some of my friends that I can even *fit* in a 152.

Although I've no pictures to see for myself, I'm sure I make an interesting sight crammed into a 152 cockpit. With a passenger, it's certainly "shoulder to shoulder" flying.

Now, of course, whenever I've been lining up prospective future passengers, I find myself eyeing up weight issues before I even bother asking if they'd be interested.

Today, after getting a positive response on the initial "Hey, want to go flying with me?" question from a few people I asked, I had to ask the inevitable followup question - "How much do you weight?"

Since it's been all guys I've asked to fly with me so far (I'm not sure how understanding my wife would be about it otherwise! Heh) it's not been a huge issue, as most of them are fairly forthcoming with said information.

Of course, when you have a bunch of guys together and ribbing may ensue, some may "fudge" the number they blurt out somewhat, so it's important to explain that close to real numbers are important.

I was asked why this was an issue a couple of times, and then had to explain to people that with little airplanes, every pound counts, as well as where that pound is located in relation to the C Of G.

Alot of people were blown away to hear that a 152 can only legally weigh up to 1670lbs fully loaded, including fuel, passengers, and "cargo". (We all know how much "Cargo" a 152 can haul. Wheel chocks, anyone?

Anyhow - Expectedly, most of these people have never been anywhere near a small GA aircraft before, and their exposure to the world of aviation has been limited to passenger jets, where all these sorts of questions and calculations are detached from the passengers, and are all done "in the background" by the flight crew.

I can see a day coming where I'm going to have to ask someone of the opposite sex the question that every man out there dreads - "How much do you weigh?"

Of course, I can always guess, and avoid the question all together. If I'm flying a local sightseeing flight where 1/2 or 3/4 tanks are acceptable, and I can make an educated guess that said passenger is "in the range of x lbs" (Where x keeps the airplane legal, with a comfortable buffer in case my guess is off somewhat) it's a non issue.

But for a long cross country where carrying the maximum amount of fuel possible is necessary, I can only suspect it will eventually come up.

Now, I'm not trying to be a male chauvinist in any fashion whatsoever, but it's no secret that some ladies are more touchy then others with the weight question. I've seen women who were slim and trim take offence to someone asking how much they weighed.

It seems as if it's a verboten question for some ladies. Come to think of it, I've seen guys get upset at that question as well, so it's not entirely an issue exclusive to the ladies, all things considered.

I can immagine that this is frequently an issue at flight schools everywhere, and I would guess that staff / instructors have occasionally had to deal with some fallout after having to ask the question themselves, even though the question is necessary, and is directly related to safety.

However, as I experienced recently, some people don't understand why we pilots are asking these sorts of questions, as they may not yet (as laypeople) understand the reasons behind the question.

I guess carefully wording ones self, explaining why the question is being asked in the first place, and then asking tactfully is the best method to avoid misunderstandings.

Perhaps a 172 checkout should be in the near future, and this will be less of an issue.

Typical man, right? Taking the easy way out.... :-)

Anyhow, as a newly minted pilot anxious to stretch my legs, I was greeted with this forecast this evening...

Ugh... Maybe I'll try to put something together for Tuesday, as it's looking like the only hope for the short term.

This entire weekend, however, is looking like a total and complete scratch.

CYTZ

2006-02-02T19:04:00.000-05:00

It seems the topic of the Toronto City Center Airport (CYTZ) comes up over and over again in my blog.

I'm not sure if it's my anxious goal to make it a flight destination for myself sometime soon, or the possibility that a similar fate as Meigs Field seems to hang over it's head, but it's a neverending story it seems.

It's frequently on my rant circuit. :-)

Once again in the last 24 hours, it's hit the news. Why? Good news, one would think - a new airline announced that it was buying 10 new aircraft (Canadian aircraft, at that) and was opening a small regional airline based out of City Center airport. New life will be injected into the airport, and building and service improvements are going to result.

Today, Air Canada's "Jazz" division, jumping on the bandwagon (for which I suspect they've wanted to jump on for a while now) announced they too would be increasing flight traffic in and out of the airport.

Great news, right? New jobs for people who build the aircraft in the Toronto area, a revitalized airport, some new aviation related jobs...and a more sustainable future for the airport.

It's all summed up here in a Reuters news story.

However, I don't know what it is with Toronto's city council (and mayor) but they seem to have a major bug up their collective asses about City Center airport.

For those who have been reading my blog for a while, you'll know that this is a frequent topic for me as well. I've posted about it before.. Here, here, and here, to name a few posts.

The recent news about increased traffic at City Center led to a new round of garbage being spewed by the anti-airport crowd.

Mayor David Miller: I will continue to fight for the revitalization of the waterfront. It's far too important for Toronto's success to allow it to be compromised."

Councillor Olivia Chow: "The deal must be frozen, the noise and congestion will disrupt the community."

I also heard Mayor Miller on the radio today saying that this will mean big noisy planes flying in and out of the airport every few minutes. I don't know what kind of airline running 10 planes can be in and out of the same airport "Every few minutes". Even considering the Jazz traffic, I'd be surprised if the total traffic amounts to more then a few arrivals and departures every hour.

Again, the mayor speaks with one thing on his mind - scare tactics and misinformation.

There's a bunch of other quotes, but it's really just drivel not worth repeating.

The whole gammut of excuses are tired, and mostly without basis. The "Noise" is negligible. The new airlines will consist of turboprop aircraft - these already fly into City Center, and aren't exactly terribly noisy to begin with.

Turboprops already fly into the airport. So does alot of GA traffic, some of which is already noiser then the newly scheduled turboprops.

The repeated stories about the airport being a detriment to the waterfront revitalization is the biggest crock I've ever (and continue) to hear about the airport. The vast majority of the waterfront area of Toronto is a wasteland at this point, and the airport isn't even *on* the waterfront, but rather on Toronto Island.

Before they ever open their mouth about the airport being "in the way" of the waterfront, they need to actually make some sort of progress towards having one to begin with.

And if they do actually manage to put some semblance of a waterfront area together, why is that they feel so negative towards the airport being part of it? These won't exactly be 747's and A300's flying in and out of the airport, blowing people off their feet while they enjoy the "Parklands" planned for the waterfront area.

Personally, I hope it's a cold day in hell before Toronto city council gets their way and manages actually effect the airport. Thankfully at this point it's totally out of their control, which is a good thing, otherwise it wouldn't surprise me one bit if they try to pull a Meigs Field maneuver.

I sure hope that the Canadian Owners and Pilots Association publicly awakens to this issue soon, and speaks out. I'm sure it's on their radar, although at this point it's not a huge priority I'm sure, as there are bigger fish to fry.

Although Toronto's city council appears to think they are god-like on their views of the airport, they do need a reality check from the Aviation community.

Getting back to myself, I'm rescheduled for Sunday for the first passenger routine. Who it will be is sort of up in the air again, but I'm confident I'll find a taker.

Foiled.

2006-02-01T18:49:00.000-05:00

The plans for tommorow fell apart earlier today. The main issue is that there was not a 100% confirmation that my temporary licence will be ready in time.

I guess that the person looking after such at my flightschool didn't get my file untill just recently, and understandably it takes time to process everything before signing off on my temp licence.

So, without a guarentee that I'm going to have a licence to take a passenger tommorow, it really wasn't worth trying to take advantage of the day afterall at the cost of a days work. I've had so many delays up to this point it's not worth getting frustrated by yet another one.

Sundays weather is looking increasinly hopefull. My first passenger isn't likely to be my sister in this situation however, as she apparently has plans for Sunday.

There's lots of others lined up...we'll have to see.

Two posts...

2006-01-31T22:42:00.000-05:00

....in one evening. Yes, I'm bored tonight.

I was playing around this evening and figured it was time to get some more of my flying related images viewable, outside of the blog itself. A few other bloggers I follow use Flickr, so I thought I'd give it a shot. I've never been a huge fan of web-based image aggregators like this due to the simple fact that every one I've ever used in the past has either suddenly disapeared, or went "Pay Only"...and then of course, eventually disapeared.

However, Flickr seems like it'll be around for a while, so I'll give it another shot.

I uploaded a bunch of pics tonight. The main batch is a small selection of pictures I snapped at the Canadian Aviation Expo at CYOO (My home airport) last summer. There's also a few from a sightseeing tour I took last summer, and a handfull of pics from one of my first few solo's away from the airport late last summer.

The main reason I got this setup is so that I can post the pictures of my first passenger flight Thursday (See blog entry below from earlier this evening) which I'll definately want to share online with friends and familly...and any bloggers who should feel so inclined.

So, feel free to browse. You can find my Flickr page by clicking on the little flash image display in the "Links 'N Stuff" frame on the right, or go direct by clicking here.

I will endeavour to bring my camera along much more now that I'm concentrating more on enjoying the flights, and a little less on the instructional / practice aspect.

February 2

2006-01-31T19:38:00.000-05:00

February second will be my first shot at a passenger, finally getting to exercise my new privledges as a pilot.

I was originally reserved for this coming weekend, but after making a doctors appointment for Thursday morning, and having to book a day off work as a result, the opportunity arose to fly Thursday instead.

A quick check with my sister (Who shall be my first official passenger) confirmed that she was available in the afternoon. Another quick call to the airport confirmed an aircraft.

Houston, we're a go!

All in all, it should work out well. This weekends weather was looking less then ideal for flying anyways, so the opportunity to fly Thursday was a bonus. The weather is looking excellent at this point, and my sister is excited about the prospects of flying with her little brother.

My sister makes no secret that someday she would love to get her own licence, but at this time it's not in the cards...but she sure is enthusiastic about flying, and is eager to hear the stories of my training and experiences thus far. She already has a good idea of where she wants to go, and what she would like to get pictures of from the air.

Who else will fly with me? Surprisingly, I've got quite a few people lining up for the opportunity, so I suspect I'll have lots of excuses to fly now that it's official that I can do so with passengers. My wife? Over dinner tonight she expressed some interest in seeing the fall colours....next fall. A frequent flyer, she will not be. :-)

I'm sure I'll get her up sometime soon though - hopefully once she's up and realizes how beautifull flying in a small aircraft can be I'll be able to convince her to join me more often.

My kids are also chomping at the opportunity to get a chance to fly with Daddy, but I'm not sure about the whole thing quite yet. Neither of them have ever (that they remember, anyways) flown in a small plane, and I'm somewhat concerned about their reaction. Although my 8 year old son is likely to be fine, my 6 year old daughter may not be quite so reasonable...and the last place I need a freakout is in the passenger seat while I'm PIC.

A ride in the backseat of a 172 for both of them may be in order first.

So, Thursday it shall be. I'll have lots of pictures.