[April 23, 2013 02:54 | 2 Comments | 334 views]
Last Minute Flight to Muskoka (CYQA)

It was Sunday afternoon when I decided to see if there was a plane available at 6pm. I called up the airport, and indeed there was!

So far, the new booking policy at TAL has paid off. For me specifically, I’ve been able to fly exactly when I wanted to without having to book months in advance.

I filed my flight plan for the following routing:

CYKZ YSO CYQA CYLS CYKZ

This would give us a round robin flight around Lake Simcoe

The flight was smooth above 4000′ and hazy, but still perfect conditions with …

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[April 7, 2013 21:47 | 3 Comments | 348 views]
Back Up In The Air & Status of Buttonville Airport

Yesterday involved a 1.5 hour checkout with a flight instructor at Toronto Airways. It had been 8 months (damn, time flies) since I was last up in the air.

Toronto Airways has changed their checkout policy for the better. Checkouts now involve 0.5 hours of ground briefing plus 1 hour in the air. The good news is that you pay for the aircraft time only. No more $300 checkouts!

After we did some weight and balance and performance calculations we headed out to the airplane to do some circuits. I ended up with …

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[January 8, 2013 23:07 | One Comment | 1,884 views]
Pilot Information Kiosks (PIKs) To Be Decomissioned

NavCanada has decided that the Pilot Information Kiosks in various airports across Canada will be decommissioned by the end of August of this year.

The main reason? Lack of use.

PIK were introduced in the early 2000s when the availability of the Internet, cell phone, and other mobile technologies were limited. Due to the emergence of this technology NAV CANADA has seen dramatic decreases in the use of PIK, to a point where further investment is no longer practical.

Not surprising that they are getting rid of them given the reasons stated above. The eventual …

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[January 7, 2013 22:18 | No Comment | 1,556 views]
GTA Rental Rates Updated

I just did an update of the GTA Rental rates spreadsheet for aicraft rentals in the Toronto Area.  I’ve updated all the prices, as well added the Brantford Flying Club.

If you have any recommendations, suggestions, or corrections… please let me know.

The minimum annual cost to fly is still out of Brantford (no change from 2012).

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[December 1, 2012 00:38 | One Comment | 6,567 views]
NavCanada Digital Products

My annual renewal form came in the mail for my CFS subscription. In it was a letter on a blue piece of paper that read:

NEW!

NAV CANADA now offers the Canada Air Pilot (CAP), Reistricted Canada Air Pilot (RCAP) and Canada Water Aerodrome Supplement (CWAS) in electronic PDF download format…

Wow! This is great news..

This is something that a lot of Canadian flyers have been asking for.

You can purchase the digital versions on Nav Canadas e-commerce site.

 

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[October 23, 2012 02:01 | One Comment | 5,159 views]
Still Alive!

I haven’t been flying or posting a lot lately. This past year has been busy with other things in my life.

Doug and I spent a lot of time working on the latest version of World Flight Planner. We had a booth at the latest COPA AGM and we’ve been updating the software to support more features based on feedback from our users.

I’ve been hard at work at renovating the house my wife and I purchased a while ago. So most of the flying money has gone there.

That isn’t to say …